Standardization across multiple sites.

Standardizing products, procedures, and processes in clinical departments across multiple sites has significant potential for improving clinical outcomes, enhancing financial savings, and simplifying management processes. This is true whether a network of owned hospitals is working toward a full-scale clinical integration or a group of community hospitals is collaborating to gain cost efficiencies. By developing a functional team and designing a relatively simple program, the results can be very rewarding. The author describes some of the basic principles in designing a standardization program and cites some examples of successful programs as well as listing some pitfalls to be avoided along the way.