PolicyStat

The VHS Tape Faithful

Josh — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 12:30:09 +0000

"If it ain't broke, why fix it?"

The venerable and trusty VHS tape. After winning the Betamax battle in the early '80s, VHS reigned as the go-to medium for bringing you or your kid's favorite movies into the living room. The collection on your shelves invariably grew, and viewing that classic Disney film had never been easier. The VCR, used to play VHS tapes, had become a mainstay in American homes.


photo by Navin75 via PhotoRee

The format war from decades past seemingly had been reignited with the introduction of the DVD format. However, the "VHS faithful" had little interest in this upstart DVD. Their homes' libraries of movies were already on VHS, they had a VCR to play them, and they were happy with the setup. If it ain't broke, why fix it?

As time would tell, DVD won. Since 2005, no major film has released with a VHS option. Consumers began noticing the benefits of a DVD, such as no rewinding, better picture quality, smaller package, more content per disc, easy navigating/searching, etc., and they soon realized adopting the DVD would be more beneficial for them.

The VHS movie experience wasn't broken, but the DVD certainly improved and added to the experience. In hindsight, the resistance to embrace the new technology was unwarranted. Fear or stubbornness to change can hinder positive change, ultimately hurting productivity and growth. Sometimes a new technology meets all the previous needs while providing significant improvements and new benefits. What aspects of your personal or professional life would you say "ain’t broke" but could still use some fixing?

"Ok, I bought a DVD player. Now what?"

In the healthcare industry, we often find "ain't broke" areas that need fixing. A spreadsheet- or binder-based system to handle policies and procedures might work alright, sometimes with minimal problems. However, if a new technology meets all the previous needs while providing significant improvements and new benefits, what's stopping you from switching? Among other advantages, policy and procedure software makes searching seamless, archiving a breeze, and email notifications an automated wonder. Looking at the outdated system and the countless hours spent on these tasks reveals a high associated cost. That "free" system is actually quite expensive as compared to a SaaS-delivered policy and procedure software.

"But I still have all these VHS tapes!"

What about all those policies in the outdated format? PolicyStat has an implementation team to change the format for facilities which can't afford to spend the time updating. We all wanted our VHS library turned into DVDs without doing the work ourselves. For policy format updating, PolicyStat understands this desire and thus takes on that task at no additional fee to our customers.

Policy and procedure software is more cost effective, more powerful, easier to use, easier to maintain, and the format change is done for you … So why are you still faithful to the old format?

Advancing health network "best practices"

Steve — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 15:39:02 +0000

One of the stated goals of the Affordable Care Act (or “Obamacare,” as some call it) is to increase the quality of healthcare in the United States. This goal can be achieved in many different ways, but all roads lead back to the concept of embracing “best practices” and following them religiously. In addition to the cultural and process work that needs to be done, technology can also play an important role in improving quality of care – for example, a policy and procedure management application can help an integrated health network define and push out best practices throughout its entire operation. As explained below, three key functions are required for such a system to be effective.

4 Lessons on Catching Big Government Fish

Rob — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 20:46:37 +0000

So you’re thinking about trying your luck in government waters, huh? The U.S. states that all small businesses have the maximum practicable opportunity to participate in providing goods and services to the government, so why not try? We have just finished bidding (and winning) a state government opportunity, so I’m going to help you do the same for your business by sharing four of the biggest lessons I learned from that deal.

New Videos and Tutorials!

Whitney — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 15:58:45 +0000

Hi, customers! We know you have questions from time to time, so we’re bringing the answers closer to you and your users with an improved support website! We’ve added 18+ new videos and how-tos, and we’ve opened access to all PolicyStat users. Here’s what you can expect from the new format.

Managing a Startup: How I kept a healthy work/life balance

Steve — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 18:02:08 +0000

Life balance … so easy to understand conceptually, but sometimes impossible to achieve in reality. Finding it is not a challenge exclusive to people who work for startups, but it is a challenge almost universally felt by employees at early stage companies. There just always seems like there is more that you would like to get done than there is available time to get it done. I’ve successfully worked through the startup stage at 3 different companies so far, and each one has presented its own challenges, lessons and rewards.

Customers, test the waters in our sandbox site!

Mark — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 12:46:34 +0000

A frequent request from PolicyStat clients – especially as they are first building their library of policies and procedures – is to have a test environment within which to work. This is certainly a reasonable request. I learn by doing much more quickly than I do by watching or reading, so I am normally inclined to “try it first” and clean up the mess afterwards! PolicyStat has created an environment for our developers to test product enhancements and for our client services team to build training systems. This test system is a great resource that should be shared with our clients as well for their own testing and training.

Automatic Approval Routing

Whitney — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 16:04:09 +0000

If you are the person in charge of finding the best policy management software, then you probably already know the value of automatic approval routing. Different people review and make edits to each policy or procedure, and the last thing you want is to manually route the policy to each person via email. Implementing policy management software with automatic approval routing (or approval workflows) improves both efficiency and staff productivity.

The NEW Policy Lifecycle Management Process

Whitney — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 14:15:37 +0000

You might know bits and pieces of your organization’s policy and procedure workflow, or maybe you’re well-versed in the whole policy lifecycle (or life cycle) process. However, if you’re envisioning binder-based policies or documents stored in folders on a shared drive, you’re thinking of the old way. It's time for a change in your process. Let me explain.

RHIT Juniors Expand Leading Edge of Real-Time Collaboration

Wes — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 12:28:12 +0000

During the 2010/11 academic year, our software engineering team was fortunate enough to secure a couple just-down-the-road Rose-Hulman (RHIT) juniors as part of their new multi-quarter junior project series in Computer Science and Software Engineering (CSSE). In the junior design series, student teams pick outside clients and spend three quarters working on a project with real-world constraints and challenges.

Policies and Procedures Management: How to choose the best system

Steve — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 17:24:53 +0000

Investing in a policies and procedures management system is a great first step in accomplishing the healthcare reform goals of reducing costs and increasing quality of care – it shrinks or eliminates many operational costs involved in maintaining policies and procedures, and it helps to promote healthcare best practices. Any system you choose will be around for years to come, so you will want to be thorough in your search; the checklist below will help you evaluate the top ten factors to consider when choosing a system.