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Giving Compass' Take:
• Research from The Commonwealth Fund identifies the elements of successful interventions behavioral to improve healthcare.
• How can funders help spread effective practices to providers?
• Learn about behavioral design improvements for cities.
A deep understanding of human behavior is critical to designing effective health care delivery models, tools, and processes. Currently, however, few mechanisms exist to systematically apply insights about human behavior to improve health outcomes. Behavioral design teams (BDTs) are a successful model for applying behavioral insights within an organization. Already operational within government, this model can be adapted to function in a healthcare setting.
To explore how BDTs could be applied to clinical care delivery and review models for integrating these teams within health care organizations.
A systematic and rigorous approach to the application of insights about human behavior could be a key tool for building better healthcare delivery. BDTs, armed with potent insights about behavior and a rigorous evidence-based methodology and modeled on a successful approach in both federal and city governments, may enable effective changes in the delivery of healthcare. BDTs are composed of trained experts in behavioral science experienced in designing, implementing, and testing interventions inspired by the behavioral sciences. The team structure is adaptable. BDTs can integrate to suit the provider’s organizational structure, either adjacent to the CEO’s office or within existing quality improvement or internal innovation units.
Peter Pronovost’s catheter checklist, which dramatically reduced infection rates in hospitals, is one of the most effective medical innovations in recent years. It was based on a simple insight: time-pressured doctors can neglect to perform small steps that reduce hospital-based infections, like washing their hands or procuring a sterile mask. Developing an easy process for ensuring these steps occur might help decrease the rate of infections.