4 Ways Leaders Can Up Their Business Game

Perioperative leaders are facing greater responsibilities for financial stewardship of their departments and organization but may not have the business skills they need, according to Pamela Hunt, MSN, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN, a nurse executive, author, financial, quality, safety and strategic expert, and community leader nationally known for helping nursing leaders improve their financial know-how. 

“Many leaders are promoted to their positions due to their clinical knowledge and not their business acumen,” Hunt explains. “This can leave perioperative leaders struggling to overcome a gap in education and practice as it relates to the business of healthcare.”

To close this gap, Hunt is sharing her financial expertise through October in a virtual live webinar series called OR Leadership Essentials. She’ll cover staffing, revenue and budgets and making the business case for safety. 

Here’s a look at four key business challenges Hunt says leaders need to target and the pearls she will share to help them do it.

Leadership Challenge #1: Building a Staffing Plan That Achieves the Right Staffing Mix

“When developing a staffing plan, we need to consider how many FTE do we have, how many do we need and how do we maintain productivity. Appropriate skill mix is a critical part of this staffing plan for the population served because it is essential for fiscal responsibility.”

In Hunt’s Oct. 8 session on Principles of Perioperative Staffing she will educate on the vital methods of staffing such a stair step shifts, matching worked hours to work demand and skill mix. She will also share practical day-to-day staffing tips such as how to avoid lunch slowdowns and thinking through how call coverage impacts staffing demand.

Leadership Challenge #2: Leveraging Productivity Metrics to Get What You Need

“To respond to productivity requirements, you first must know how the productivity is calculated and then be able to analyze what might be causing a problem with productivity. For example, it’s important to constantly trend productivity alongside quality metrics to ensure there is not a negative correlation between these metrics.”

In Hunt’s Oct. 10 session on Improving Perioperative Productivity she  will explain how to calculate productivity and then practice it through several scenarios that could be causing a variance. She will also cover how to respond when other factors are negatively influencing the productivity target, such as accurate payroll, late clock outs, non-value added overtime, and process inefficiencies.

Leadership Challenge #3: Having a Future-Focused Mindset When Managing Revenue and Budgets

“When we think about revenue, the change in payer mix and reimbursement has greatly impacted our organization’s ability to create positive operating margins. On the expense side, now more than ever, we as perioperative leaders need to be very collaborative with our supply chain partners.”

In her Oct. 14 session on Revenue and Expense Budgeting, Hunt will share short-term, as well as long-term payor mix solutions and what a perioperative leader needs to understand about how current revenue challenges affect the operating income of the organization. She will share ways to control expenses and also talk about strategies such as protecting the supply chain to care for patients.

Leadership Challenge #4: Knowing What Business Data Can Demonstrate Safety

“Providing both safe and quality patient care is our number one objective as nursing leaders. Oftentimes it is difficult to articulate the business case for patient safety or workforce safety because soft (intangible) and hard (tangible) dollar costs are difficult to capture.”  

In her Oct. 16 session on Making the Business Case for Safety, Hunt will discuss how to articulate soft and hard dollar cost in making a business case for a new product or process change that is going to improve patient and quality safety. She will cover the important metrics to establish prior to the change and how to revisit those metrics to ensure the problem addressed through the change has been solved.  

Ready to take one of Hunt’s courses? Or sign up for the complete series? Register now for a course. Each session offers 2.0 CH/2.0 AEU. Learn more about this and other education offered through the Center for Perioperative Leadership.