Written by Carole W. Kamangu
Planning for the new year is an important year-end strategy for organizational leaders to lay a strong foundation and achieve organizational goals more effectively. This is true for leaders across industries including healthcare. In the healthcare setting, the infection prevention and control (IPC) program is an important pillar of the organizational structure that can make or break its financial standing and reputation.
Healthcare leaders whose IPC programs have optimized operations and access to adequate resources such as proper staffing, equipment, and training opportunities can effectively promote quality care and significantly reduce costs. On the other hand, those whose IPC programs have insufficient resources can see operational costs increase due to healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) and inefficient processes. This can negatively affect patient care delivery and damage the organization's reputation.
Over the past few years, I’ve partnered with healthcare organizations to build sustainable IPC programs, promote patient safety, and achieve measurable results. I’ve learned through this work that an optimized IPC program with a forward-thinking leadership team and an organizational culture that encourages a continuous improvement mindset will effectively promote quality patient care and help reduce costs.
One of my proudest achievements was helping a healthcare system reduce healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) by 33% and achieving over $570,000 in cost savings within 100 days. This achievement informed future actions and provided learned experiences that helped optimize the program by identifying focus areas for further improvements and streamlining operations that aligned with the organization’s mission and priorities. This contributed to the facility’s earned Magnet Status, positioning itself as a national leader in infection control and nursing excellence.
3 Key Steps for Effective Goal Setting in Infection Control
Step 1 - Evaluation
The evaluation process is important for effective goal setting. The healthcare leader (i.e. the IPC program leader), looking to set the IPC program for success for the new year should take a retroactive look at the program’s goals and objectives, and assess for achievements and challenges encountered along the way. Some important questions to ask during this evaluation include:
What were our priorities?
What did we accomplish?
What worked well?
What didn’t work so well?
What challenges kept us from achieving our goals?
What resources do we need to improve? (e.g. training opportunities, additional supplies and staffing)
It's important to remember to prioritize and monitor your goals and objectives regularly throughout the year. When this data has been regularly collected, you can be certain that the rate of utilization of your current resources and the success of your interventions will demonstrate improvements or the need for additional resources in a way that resonates with the executive team. Additionally, having this documentation available helps make the evaluation process more effective. For example, demonstrating through data that an optimized hand hygiene program met evidence-based guidelines and regulatory requirements, and helped reduce HAI rates would be a clear sign of the IPC program’s success and grab the executive team's attention. I address effective prioritization and utilization controls in this article: 5 Steps to Optimize Your Infection Control Program for Maximum Impact.
Step 2 - Prioritization
After completing the evaluation process, it’s crucial to identify priorities for the next year. The main question to ask is: “What are our most pressing organizational and programmatic needs and priorities?”
Once these priorities are identified, it’s important to establish a second level of prioritization by narrowing down this list; for example, from 10 priorities to the 3 most immediate, realistic, and impactful priorities that will help achieve tangible results more effectively. Skipping this step will likely lead to overlooked inefficiencies and missed opportunities for improvement.
When setting priority goals for the coming year, it’s important to focus on two angles:
Organizational focus
In a recent LinkedIn poll, I asked healthcare leaders in infection control about their biggest dreams for their programs. Twenty-one percent of the respondents reported that they wanted to gain leadership support.
Source: LinkedIn poll
As a healthcare leader, your programmatic goals and priorities are at the top of your mind. However, your focus should not only be on the effectiveness of your program operations but also on how they align with organizational goals and priorities. An effective approach to this process is using a Balanced Scorecard to map out organizational goals and strategic priorities and describe IPC program goals and priorities that will align with them. By mapping this out, you can demonstrate to the executive team that the IPC program’s priorities are part of the big picture and align with the organization’s mission and vision. Making this association clear for the executive team is an effective first step in securing buy-in and obtaining the resources needed to promote patient safety through infection prevention.
Programmatic focus
On a smaller scale, as the healthcare leader, your support should ensure that the infection preventionist’s goal-setting process for the new year has a similar strategic approach. The focus should be on operations that lead to programmatic effectiveness while meeting evidence-based and regulatory guidelines. By determining which interventions and operational improvements align with the guidelines, the IP can demonstrate to you, as the healthcare leader, the importance of supporting IPC interventions that will meet the organization's mission; for example, ensuring quality patient care or achieving leadership status in long-term care delivery.
Both approaches at the macro and micro levels of organizational efficiency will help ensure leadership buy-in and set your IPC program for success for the new year.
Would you like to learn how to use a Balanced Scorecard effectively to gain support from the executive team?
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Step 3 - Implementation
Once a focused evaluation and prioritization of goals have been completed, it’s time to put some plans in place. The approach to prioritization for the healthcare leader and the infection preventionist should use the popular S.M.A.R.T. Goal framework to set clear, measurable, achievable goals that can be realistically accomplished within a defined timeframe.
As the executive team will be most interested in the details outlined in the Balanced Scorecard, your focus should be on prioritizing these strategic organizational goals and focus on program activities that will achieve an immediate positive impact for the patients and their families (i.e. your facility’s customers). To make a bigger impact and streamline this process, it’s important to break down all the priorities you listed in the prioritization phase into small, targeted steps; for example, by setting deadlines for different quarters of your fiscal year. We created a quick tool, the program optimization checklist to help you streamline this process.
It’s important to remember that the infection preventionist (IP)’s input should always be considered a part of the bigger picture to demonstrate the value of the IPC program to the organization’s leadership. The IP, when empowered and supported by leadership at the programmatic and executive levels, can effectively support organizational goals and promote patient safety. The IP’s focus should be on ensuring compliance with evidence-based guidelines and regulatory requirements through interventions that reduce the risk of HAIs and their impact on the facility as an ecosystem from the bedside to the community. The IP will be more effective with this process by planning focused strategies through a robust risk assessment process and detailed work plan.
Final Thoughts
Addressing your facility’s success as an ecosystem from the lens of the executive leader, the program leader and the infection preventionist will help achieve your goals for the new year more effectively and strategically.
Featured Resource: Download the Program Optimization Checklist
If you'd like to discuss your priorities for next year and partner with us to help you achieve your goals more effectively, please contact us
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