Perhaps no other industry is in as much crisis as the healthcare industry is today. The demands to increase quality and decrease costs are nearly impossible to manage for all types of healthcare providers. No single product, service, or solution will balance and solve these potentially conflicting challenges overnight. Sustainable, cost-effective, and high-quality healthcare will require many drivers and multiple solutions coming together to work effectively.

Prism, through a number of initiatives, partners, and products, is working to provide part of the solution for the healthcare arena.

With a key customer, the American Academy of Nursing (see Prism Customer Profiles), Prism is working to migrate best practice process improvement techniques from the manufacturing sector to the healthcare industry. Prism’s experience in Quality Management suggests that understanding, defining, and documenting workflows and processes is a fundamental step necessary to help analyze what works well and what doesn’t. Prism is supporting the AAN to define workflows to identify opportunities where technology solutions can be applied to streamline processes and increase efficiencies to help alleviate the critical shortage in nursing resources.  This initiative started with a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

In addition, with its partner TUV Healthcare Specialists (see Prism Partner Profiles), Prism is working to support a breakthrough initiative that will revolutionize the way hospitals manage quality and maintain accreditation for Medicare reimbursement. TUV HS is leading the way in establishing and implementing the National Integrated Accreditation for Healthcare Organizations (NIAHO) program, to provide an alternative to the JCAHO® and HFAP® survey programs to determine compliance with Medicare's Conditions of Participation. Prism is providing the equation^® technology for hospital and other healthcare providers to utilize for NIAHO compliance and for overall quality management. Since a component of the NIAHO program requires ISO 9001 registration for NIAHO accredited organizations, Prism and the equation^® system are natural fits for solutions in this area.

If you are a healthcare organization determined to improve quality and manage costs, please contact Prism to learn how our solutions can help balance these needs.

Please see the Customers section to review a few Customer Profiles or to see an extensive Customer List.