How to Approach a Hospital

[sudo]

Hopefully I'm posting this in the right place (apologies in advance if I'm not):

I've organized a group of students who have developed the framework for an idea that aims to improve patient care and recovery after specific procedures, and decrease readmission rates.

Problem is, we aren't what the best route is to approach local hospitals. Should we contact the head of a specific department (ex: cardiology) or take a different route?

Our goal is to work with them to get a better sense at how they operate prior to discharging patients.

Thanks!

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[deleted480308]

get a professor/MD to act with you as a sponsor and help you get a meeting with their chief of medicine or CFO.....

are you in fl by any chance? (I know a CFO on the coast)

 

[sudo]

get a professor/MD to act with you as a sponsor and help you get a meeting with their chief of medicine or CFO.....

are you in fl by any chance? (I know a CFO on the coast)

Thanks for the quick reply. No, I'm in Kansas.

 

[pumapants]

Hey, I thought I'd throw in my 2 cents.

I'm an administrative intern at a 230 bed hospital right now, and your best route is probably either the CFO or the COO. Most department heads (like cardiology) are really busy with personnel issues and such. Well, everyone in leadership at a hospital has too much work to do. But, if you can get a meeting with a COO or CFO, and propose cost reduction/efficiency improvement and have a well-developed plan, you'll probably have some success. The nice thing about going to administration is that they're in charge of everything anyway, and they spend a lot more time focusing on operations/improvement than department heads do.

The tricky thing is, a lot of the time you have ideas for improvement but don't really have a feel for how the actual hospital works. I experienced this lots when I started out as an intern, and then gained an understanding on the inner workings of the hospital. If you get the opportunity to work in a hospital, you'll definitely want to spend some time hanging out in the department and then proposing your improvements.