Standards of Care (SOC) are established so ALL providers have the same professional position on wellness surveillance, preventative care and protective procedures. Clinical freedom is offered clinicians on acute care, curatuve medicine and surgery - that is why they went to school!
If there is NOT practice consistency in wellness surveillance, preventative healthcare "needs" and protective procedures, staff get frustrated (they cannot safely represent the practice to teh community) and clients get confused (confused clients will go to a practice which does not confuse them).
The practice SOC must be a dynamic written diocument, and for every day of continuing education attended, that staff member/doctor/coordinator comes back and makes ONE IMPROVEMENT in the existing SOC document, and ensures the implmentation process stays alive for 90 days.
The provider commitments to the SOC are procedure numbers, not dollars. Procedures need to be counted and tracked by doctor. IF a provider sees 250 animals, and the practice SOC uses the food company research that states over 50% of animals accessing the practice need some form of nutritional care, then that means 125 potential nutritional patients were seen . . . with a YES-NO option system, 50% say "yes", and with a TWO YES OPTION, 75% plus say yes . . . so let's stay conservative at 50%of 125, or 62 patients should hav ebeen refrred to the nursing staff for nutritional counseling . . . if teh computer tracks the refrrals of that provider of client/patient to nursing nutritional consults, the ratio shows doctor effectiveness compared to the existing SOC of the practice.
IVECCS states 80% of all animals undergoing anesthesia deserve Intraoperatory Fluids (IOF). IOF is a protocol based I.V. T.K.O. (I.V. To Keep Open); it is a small bag of isotonic fluids, simple giving set and catheter, about $6.50 cost to the practice, done by protocol by nurses, so there is NO DOCTOR TIME (metabolic fluids require a major integration of therapy planning by doctors, so are priced DIFFERENTLY from IOFs). What is YOUR rate of IOFs to anesthesias?
Managing SOC is believing in the SOC . . . it is a series of actions by providers, tracked by the practice software as procedure counts . . . and it is the Medical Director taking each provider into a quiet room and discussing, one-on-one, their variance from the initial commitment to the SOC document. It is accepting the simple fact that any shortfall from the SOC: 1) puts an animal in jeapordy, 2) allows an animal to suffer, and/or 3) puts the practice into a liability situation. >*-*<
|