Stop 7 of 8 · Weekly
The report the administrator reads
Two pages for a non-clinical reader: what is at risk, what changed since last quarter, the risk paragraph in their language, and one ask with a date.
Two different documents from the same findings
Dr. Salma leaves every engagement with two reports. The findings report goes to the infection preventionist and the quality committee: every finding, every standard, every corrective action, written to be argued with. The administrator's report is two pages and goes to the person who decides whether the sterilizer gets replaced this year.
Consultants send the first one to both readers and then wonder why nothing was funded. An administrator running a surgery centre reads the first page, and if that page is a table of standard numbers, that is where the engagement ends.
What the two pages hold
- Where the facility stands in three sentences, without a number in them.
- What closed since the last visit, by name, with credit to the people who closed it.
- What is still open, in order of what it costs the facility if it stays open.
- The risk paragraph.
- One ask, with a date and a named owner.
Everything else, including every citation, sits in the appendix that nobody opens until a surveyor arrives.
The risk paragraph
This is the paragraph the administrator reads twice and quotes to the owner. It does three things: it says what could happen to a patient, it says how much of the facility's volume or census sits behind the gap, and it says what a survey finding at this level would mean in practical terms, such as a plan of correction, a revisit or a condition level citation. No adjectives. No worst case story. Dr. Salma writes the numbers herself from the facility profile, because they are the only part Claude cannot know.
Try this
Rewrite the attached findings report as a two page memo for a non-clinical administrator at this facility. Structure: where they stand in three sentences with no numbers, what closed since the last visit, what is still open in order of cost to the facility if it stays open, the risk paragraph, and one ask with a date and an owner. Move every standard number and citation to an appendix. Plain sentences, no clinical shorthand, nothing longer than two pages. [paste the findings report]
Write the risk paragraph three times for the same finding. Once for an administrator who is worried about the next survey, once for one who is worried about patient harm, and once for one who is worried about cost. Same facts in all three, different order and emphasis. Do not exaggerate any of them, and leave a bracketed blank wherever a number should come from the facility profile rather than from you.
Here is the ask I want to make. Rewrite it as a single paragraph an administrator can approve without a meeting: what I want, what it costs in money and staff time, what it prevents, what happens if it waits a quarter, and the date I need the decision by. If the ask is really three asks, split it and tell me which one to send first. [paste the ask in your own words]
Read this memo as the administrator. Tell me the first sentence where you would stop reading, anything that reads as blame rather than as a finding, and any point where you would ask what does that mean. Then tell me what you think I am asking you to do, in one sentence. [paste the memo]