Transition
What makes transitioning to this new hospital in Curaçao so unique?
In simple words: complexity and time pressure. In more affluent terms: The amount of new structures and processes that need to be implemented upon opening — all of which require new people skills, willingness to embrace the changes and the agility to quickly adapt to them — all at the same time. It’s almost unprecedented.
Transition Program Scope of Changes
Browsing through the following 6 main paths of change, you can catch a glimpse of the
complexities of this transition. It is much like looking at the tip of an iceberg without having
the whole mass in sight.
Transitioning to a New Building
The most evident sign of our transition is the new building already risen behind the House of Change, our transition headquarters. Four diagonally placed 3-story sections face the sea and the busy highway. One massive central hall separates them from the other 3 sections that face the Otrobanda (downtown) side of the building, in which the main entrance to the hospital is located. The architects designed the building with patient-centeredness in mind. With details that create ease for patients as well as for the personnel attending to them. The layout facilities smooth logistical patient-flows and offers the flexibility to the medical staff in organizing patient-centered work flows.
Transitioning to Digital
We are creating a fully digitalized working environment; our teams are preparing for a new patient registration system using a software called HiX. Digital collection and registration of patient’s data permeates all patient functions and the processes in the new hospital; even the equipment is hooked up to the HiX system. This allows human-free registration whenever possible and creates new steps to ensure correct handling of dosages and other vital actions. All this has been done to lower the margin of errors that come naturally when humans are involved.
HiX is customized to work with our specific hospital needs and
equipment; it is new to more than 97% of our personnel. This requires extensive training and upgrade of our entire workforce of more than 1200 people.
Transitioning to a New Company
We are also transferring the personnel to a new company that will be operated with a new financial vision; the latter is currently in its final stages of completion after undergoing thorough analysis of the previous financial ailments of the hospital. HNO Transitie en Exploitatie N.V. will be home to all activities surrounding patients and their care, and sister company HNO Vastgoed en Beheer N.V. will be responsible for all building related and
maintenance activities. Both are subsidiaries of the holding company: Stichting HNO Holding.
We are proud and happy to have reached an agreement with SEHOS and the labor union CBV in which the rules and regulations for the people’s judicial positions have been safeguarded. This agreement, called the Sociaal Statuut was signed on September 25th, 2018.
Transitioning to a New Mindset
All these and other changes have spurred human resource and legal statutory changes. Jobs are evolving, growing into more digitally advanced ones. The layout of the new hospital is built according to patient-centered principles, which means patient flows will be different, work flow will be different, and many more details will noticeably be different for both patients and the staff. This new way of working will require a change in mindset for the hospital team. Leadership and change management training sessions are being rolled out as we are writing this, while an evolved HRM department is matching current skill set of individuals to the newly emerging skills necessary to meet the demands of evolved jobs in the new hospital.
The enthusiasm of the people working in the current hospital is
unmistakable; we are grateful for this and we have faith in the agility to adopt new mindsets.
Transitioning to a New Face of Health Care
With the latest digital data integration systems in place, state-of-the-art operating rooms, newly upgraded equipment and patient-centered process flows, the possibility to do so much more than was ever possible before in Curaçao opened up. Picture your doctor sitting in his office and accessing all your medical data, or the drugstore having all your prescriptions ready before you arrive to pick them up on your way home. Suppliers in the hospital care chain will all have to come along with us on these changes and make necessary changes in their work processes; many will be able to upgrade and seek efficiencies.
Think SVB and insurance companies, and outpatient care modalities such as physiotherapists and elderly care, government institutions, other hospitals in the region, suppliers of food, medicine, and much more. We strive to reap these opportunities to the benefit of the
patients.
Transitioning to Nation-wide Wellness
Cost effectiveness is an integral part of the new hospital and that is what we are working on. However, as a nation we will have to become healthier for reasons beyond the love we share with our family and friends. We need to lower our health care ‘footprint’ so we can pay for the price of health care. Together with the government, we advocate for the Curaçao Wellness Nation concept.
A document called Zorgvisie is being shared and discussed with other players in the health care field, to be used as a basis for creating a healthier population. Doing so will help us create the level of health care our nation craves and at a cost our population can carry.