Time Out - II
Just Say “No” - Meeting Moratoriums
The fact is health care professionals waste lots of valuable time in unproductive meetings and are not very happy about it. Meetings are a chronic concern that is perceived as disappointing, if not dysfunctional. For this there are both direct costs and opportunity costs.
People are looking for a purpose to their work and to their meetings. A purpose that is easily stated, outwardly directed, and has the potential to make a real difference. This begins with knowing, indeed justifying, why you need to meet. Change centers on an ability to communicate the need for change. No change occurs until people understand and embrace “the why” of the change. Within the context of this paper, this …show more content…
The consequences are well known. Organized medicine has recently attempted to modulate this impact by setting a mandatory cap on the number of hours a resident can work . At the time of this writing, the Joint Commission, the national organization that accredits hospitals is proposing a new patient safety goal: hospitals must urgently tackle the failure of medical staff to respond to patient alarms, a common phenomenon known as alarm fatigue. As the health care industry struggles with various types of fatigue, this paper introduces some suggestions to mitigate yet another form of fatigue – meeting fatigue.
On suggestion that has been well received is the “No Meeting Zone.” That is a block of protected time when, as the name suggestions, there are no meetings. I was inspired by the advertising, public relations, and branding agency, Grey New York which declared Thursday morning a No Meeting Zone from 9:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. Officially sanctioned time to expand employee’s minds and devote time to ideas that kept getting pushed to the side. As one might expect, the Zone was enthusiastically embraced by everyone at the …show more content…
Clinically this includes what tests to order as well as what tests not to order. What medications to prescribe and which not to prescribe. Similarly, as stewards of the organization’s resources, effective prioritization must become a management priority. During Meetings Moratorium Month no meetings will occur without first submitting the business case justifying the essential nature of the proposed meeting. This business case would include, but not be limited to: a listing of all required participants as well as the cost of the meeting – fully-loaded (salary + benefits) cost of average in job classification. For example, according to the Project Management Institute the FTE per work-hour of a project manager is $50.48. This is based on a median average salary of project managers in the U.S of $105, 00/year. If we fully load this salary to include benefits at a rate of 36% we arrive at an hourly rate of $68.65. Likewise for the nurse working in a hospital (note: insert hourly and annual salary). As referenced earlier in this paper, there is a simple but eye-opening smartphone app with the name and the foreshadowing acronym Cost Of Meetings App (C.O.M.A.) that shows just how much financial capital is associated with meetings. The app prompts you to input the number of meetings attendees and an estimate of their average hourly salary.
Just Say “No” - Meeting Moratoriums
The fact is health care professionals waste lots of valuable time in unproductive meetings and are not very happy about it. Meetings are a chronic concern that is perceived as disappointing, if not dysfunctional. For this there are both direct costs and opportunity costs.
People are looking for a purpose to their work and to their meetings. A purpose that is easily stated, outwardly directed, and has the potential to make a real difference. This begins with knowing, indeed justifying, why you need to meet. Change centers on an ability to communicate the need for change. No change occurs until people understand and embrace “the why” of the change. Within the context of this paper, this …show more content…
The consequences are well known. Organized medicine has recently attempted to modulate this impact by setting a mandatory cap on the number of hours a resident can work . At the time of this writing, the Joint Commission, the national organization that accredits hospitals is proposing a new patient safety goal: hospitals must urgently tackle the failure of medical staff to respond to patient alarms, a common phenomenon known as alarm fatigue. As the health care industry struggles with various types of fatigue, this paper introduces some suggestions to mitigate yet another form of fatigue – meeting fatigue.
On suggestion that has been well received is the “No Meeting Zone.” That is a block of protected time when, as the name suggestions, there are no meetings. I was inspired by the advertising, public relations, and branding agency, Grey New York which declared Thursday morning a No Meeting Zone from 9:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. Officially sanctioned time to expand employee’s minds and devote time to ideas that kept getting pushed to the side. As one might expect, the Zone was enthusiastically embraced by everyone at the …show more content…
Clinically this includes what tests to order as well as what tests not to order. What medications to prescribe and which not to prescribe. Similarly, as stewards of the organization’s resources, effective prioritization must become a management priority. During Meetings Moratorium Month no meetings will occur without first submitting the business case justifying the essential nature of the proposed meeting. This business case would include, but not be limited to: a listing of all required participants as well as the cost of the meeting – fully-loaded (salary + benefits) cost of average in job classification. For example, according to the Project Management Institute the FTE per work-hour of a project manager is $50.48. This is based on a median average salary of project managers in the U.S of $105, 00/year. If we fully load this salary to include benefits at a rate of 36% we arrive at an hourly rate of $68.65. Likewise for the nurse working in a hospital (note: insert hourly and annual salary). As referenced earlier in this paper, there is a simple but eye-opening smartphone app with the name and the foreshadowing acronym Cost Of Meetings App (C.O.M.A.) that shows just how much financial capital is associated with meetings. The app prompts you to input the number of meetings attendees and an estimate of their average hourly salary.