Hospital Coordinators (HC)

Participation in PATH is voluntary. By registering with PATH, hospitals agree with the general orientation of the PATH'09 system and with the Vienna Statement on Hospital Performance Improvement. In particular, they agree to use PATH as an internal tool to assess and improve performance and welcome and actively contribute to the open sharing of performance improvement practices developed and implemented in their hospital with the PATH network.
Previous experience with PATH demonstrated that the commitment of hospital leadership and the integration of PATH within the hospital strategy and integration with concurrent continuous quality and performance improvement initiatives are critical success factors.
The hospital leadership and the PATH Hospital Coordinator have a major role to play in facilitating this process. The hospital leadership (e.g. CEO) is expected to:

• commit the organization to continuous performance improvement and to adopt a balanced approach to cover the six performance dimensions included in the PATH conceptual framework. The leadership understands that a comprehensive view of performance assessment is crucial to the long-term performance improvement, though the relative importance of each dimension or sub-dimension might vary to reflect strategic orientation of the hospital,
• ensure high visibility of PATH within the organization. The hospital leadership makes sure that hospital staff is informed about the hospital participation in the PATH project and that the results are widely disseminated. It motivates and, if relevant, identifies additional resources for active contribution of staff to data collection and analysis related to PATH,
• follow up PATH reports to identify areas for further scrutiny and request complementary information or additional analysis for "flagged" indicators,
• appoint and delegate responsibilities of coordination of PATH related activities to a PATH hospital coordinator. 
  

Hospital Coordinators should be highly credible in their institution and have good coordination and management skills. It is critical that they have sufficient time allocated to the project and be allowed to participate in meetings/workshops/training organized by the coordination team in the country/region.

Hospital Coordinators are expected to:

• motivate, disseminate and raise awareness: present and explain the PATH system, position it with regard to other performance management and quality improvement initiatives in the hospital, feed PATH results into the hospital scorecard or feed the hospital indicators into the PATH reports, use PATH to build a culture of measurement and accountability within the organization, explain why "measures" matter but also why they should be used with caution, etc.,
• assure high quality data collection: understand the international/national requirements for data collection, identify data sources, collaborate with relevant departments, support on-site data collection and suggest methods to limit the burden of data collection or to increase impact and promote use of information generated through PATH, document mechanisms to assure data quality, assess data quality and make sure all relevant fields are properly filled before transmitting to the national/regional level for data analysis, etc.,
• facilitate interpretation of results: ensure adequate internal communication of results (as the data are generated and analyzed within the organization and then as comparative reports are made available at the central level), motivate, set up channels and suggest methods (tools) to analyse the results and discuss how to act upon them, share the lessons learnt from other hospitals in the national/international PATH network, bring forward questions to the national/international PATH community and ask for assistance if required,
• bring areas for further scrutiny to the attention of the hospital leadership and suggest steps for analysis and/or actions for improvement,
• share experience and identify best practices within the national/international PATH network,
• liaise with the PATH Coordinator in the country,
• participate in national workshops, meetings, trainings or send representative(s).