Mrs Angela Mucic1, Mr Patrick Dodds
1Neurorehab Allied Health Network, Deer Park, Australia
Biography:
Patrick has been practicing as an Occupational Therapist in Australia and the UK for over 17 years. He has a broad range of experience assisting people from all walks of life regain their independence and achieve their goals at home, in the community, and in the workplace. He has extensive experience in complex home modifications, complex equipment prescription, neurological rehabilitation and chronic disease management. Pat is the Head of Clinical Services at NeuroRehab Allied Health Network where he champions quality improvement programs such as introducing a wheelchair credentialling framework and excellence in client-centered multi-disciplinary goal setting.
Abstract:
Traditionally, we give feedback. There is a different way to give feedback that works a lot better, a way of flipping its focus from the past to the future using a feedforward system. In the human body, feed-forward control is exemplified by the normal anticipatory regulation of heartbeat in advance of physical exertion. When we know we are about to run, a message is sent ahead of time to prepare our heart for the extra exertion. In the workplace feedforward uses triggers such to initiate a focus on success factors needed for a team member’s future performance.
At NeuroRehab Allied Health Network, we have implemented a FeedForward system as one response to NDIS pricing freeze. We required team members to increase occupancy without decreasing quality of clinical services. This talk will describe the process we implemented including the input (triggers), and the resultant actions we have defined across 6 stages. Importantly we were able to implement the Feedforward performance system to respond to both financial and quality inputs.
The results have been a transparent performance system that invests in the development of team members. It has also resulted in an increased confidence and consistency of FeedForward conversations by our leadership group. Finally, the original intention was to improve occupancy while maintaining quality. In the first 4 weeks there was a 3% increase in occupancy, and we now have a consistent system to talk about quality. We will share updated data in the presentation.