Mac's Safety Space: Money’s too tight to mention—or is it?
One of the critical relationships in the life of any healthcare facilities or safety professional is the one with your chief financial officer (CFO), which, if you think about it, is much like marriage—particularly the “for richer or for poorer” part. Not to belabor the obvious, but just about everything that we do costs money. To paraphrase, there is no such thing as free, safe operations (or lunch). I’m not going to ramble on for too long as my intent here is to recommend you take about 30 minutes from your day to watch a video about strategies for forming and/or improving your relationship with your CFO.
If you’ve not yet encountered it, the Healthcare Facilities Network is a series of YouTube videos that run the gamut of topics, from career development to planning for the future (including retirement) to maximizing patient experiences through facilities operations. The video series, hosted by my friend Peter Martin of Gosselin-Martin Associates, is aimed at the very audience to which I am speaking now—we’re all in this together and, while it always good to see and hear different perspectives, perhaps the most powerful aspect to this whole thing is that the challenges are real and shared by just about everyone in our business. So, if you haven’t come across this series, I would encourage you to poke around after you’ve watched episode 1 of “Talk finance and build a relationship with your CFO.” The more we learn about our profession, the more we can leverage the work of others to increase the effectiveness of our everyday operations—and sometimes it’s good to know we’re not alone.
About the Author: Steve MacArthur is a safety consultant with Chartis Clinical Quality Solutions (formerly known as The Greeley Company) in Danvers, Mass. He brings more than 30 years of healthcare management and consulting experience to his work with hospitals, physician offices, and ambulatory care facilities across the country. He is the author of HCPro's Hospital Safety Director's Handbook and is contributing editor for Healthcare Safety Leader. Contact Steve at stevemacsafetyspace@gmail.com.