Making the Business Case for a Patient Handling and Movement Program

What is the value of a patient handling and movement program (PHAMP) in a healthcare or hospital setting? The author of this paper, Understanding and Increasing the Value of a PHAMP at Your Institution, presents a method for creating an “investment-grade” business case for the value of a PHAMP in healthcare and hospital settings, including how this analysis can be used to create new options that increase the value of a PHAMP.

The specifics of this case result from an evaluation of the PHAMP at the Stanford Hospital and Clinics performed jointly by Strategic Decisions Group and Stanford Hospital and Clinics Risk Consulting.

Creating a compelling business case for implementing a PHAMP is crucial to ensuring adoption and to identifying the right level of implementation. The methology demonstrates how to quantify the total costs and benefits for a PHAMP, including the uncertainty of those costs and benefits. Capturing that uncertainty is critical to ensuring development of a business case that is robust and definsible and accurately portrays the actual prospects for a program.

This paper is a chapter in a longer publication, Patient Handling and Movement Assessments: A White Paper, a publication of the Facility Guidelines Institute, April 2010, prepared by the 2010 Health Guidelines Revision Committee Specialty Subcommittee on Patient Movement. The full white paper is available for free public download here.