Page 78 - HA Convention 2016 [Full Version]

HOSPITAL AUTHORITY CONVENTION 2016 Plenary Sessions

P3.1 Building Staff Commitment for the Future of Healthcare 14:30 Convention Hall B

Creating a Better Future : Think Big, Dig Deep, Start Small, Act Fast
Liak TL
Alexandra Health System, Singapore

Largely because of third party payment, public healthcare services (world-wide) is characterised by over demand. Long
queues for services, over flowing wards are the norm. Ageing, technology, public expectation, politics, and societal
unwillingness to accept death will raise demand even further. Current model of healthcare is not sustainable. Working harder,
doing more of the same faster will not work. Healthcare is in need of transformation. But transformational change is difficult,
almost impossible.

Our approach is to think big, dig deep, start small and act fast to move forward.

Think big and see beyond the current “acute, episodic illness care of body parts” to “life-long anticipatory healthcare of the
whole person.” Dig deep by segmenting population/patients into meaningful groups, studying and understanding their total
needs in great depth. Start many small scale prototyping efforts in parallel to test approaches, and act fast to scale up and
implement the successful efforts or to re-direct or improve upon unsuccessful efforts.

Tuesday, 3 May

P3.2 Building Staff Commitment for the Future of Healthcare 14:30 Convention Hall B

Building Staff Commitment for a Better Future in Healthcare
Rasa J
Australiasian College of Health Service Management, Australia

Organisations with engaged staff have been shown to deliver a better patient experience, have fewer errors and lower
infection and mortality rates. But to increase employee commitment and motivation, calls for a change in leadership approach
and a shift of the management paradigm to distribute influence and decision-making throughout the organisation, it is vitally
important that human resource strategies also need to be reviewed to foster a highly committed and productive workforce.

Furthermore, in times of uncertainty and change and with healthcare organisations under constant pressure to perform, how
do leaders build organisation-wide staff commitment to the goals of the organisation, and how do they elicit discretionary
effort from staff? In particular, what are the strategies that will build clinician engagement, at all levels of the organisation and
within clinical teams?

Without senior leadership commitment to continuous improvement in healthcare delivery over a long period of time, and
a significant commitment to distributing leadership tasks, transformational change and sustainable improvements are not
likely to occur. The role of contextual leadership and distributed leadership will be examined to point to key leadership
considerations and vital skills to be nurtured in organisation learning and development.

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