Volume 1

Revisit the Vision: Possibilities for Clinical Documentation and Intellectual Capital

Previous Chapter

A vision is a dynamic concept. It’s not something that is written once and revered forever. The best organizations revisit their vision statements annually and make some adjustments to compensate for changes in the status of achieving certain goals, the external environment, and changes within the organization. It should be the same with clinical documentation. The fact that clinical documentation is the common ground for hospital managers and the medical staff will not change. However, the issues with the documentation and whether both the hospital and the physicians are holding up their end of the deal is the dynamic piece of this. Organizations should bring together managers and physicians to speak openly and frankly about the status of their clinical documentation goals at least annually and what, if anything, they need to change.

There are five basics of strategy that every organization must focus on in addition to recognizing the importance of knowledge workers and intellectual capital. These five strategies are reviewed in the chapter. Suggestions for implementation are provided. Every organization must build its strategy using its intellectual capital to cultivate a competitive advantage. Use your documentation and data to serve your customers, beat competitors, and nurture your physicians and your staff; use it as a tool to help them collaborate; and use it as a traditional measure of performance.

This chapter follows the clinical documentation visions of a few hospitals over several years. These case studies highlight both internal and external changes and how the organizations responded effectively (or not) to them. If the response was not effective, solutions for alternative approaches are presented.