General Surgery resident Riann Robbins is on a journey to reduce unnecessary tests. She recently shared her team's work to tackle ABG testing in critical care at the annual Department of Surgery Value Symposium. What did she learn? Be patient and persistent. As Seuss said, “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”
For patients, the electronic medical record offers unprecedented access, transparency, and an ever-present screen in their appointments. For providers, the EMR’s impact on workload, efficiency, and patient connection are sources of challenge. Accelerate’s Mari Ransco puts a spin on the doctor/patient relationship by asking her dermatologist Chris Hull to share how he balances the demands of Epic with personalized patient care.
Visual cues in the workflow reduce cognitive load and help process stakeholders make the right decision. Steve Johnson interviews Dan Vargo in this Lean Behind the Scenes exclusive.
When health care is designed around patient needs, it doesn't just benefit the patient — it can also help providers find fulfillment in their work. But what does that look like in practice? Physician Joy English opened the Orthopaedic Injury Clinic, an innovative service that delivers better value to patients. Her success is a case study in how to achieve both provider and patient happiness.
Matt Rim, Manager of Ambulatory Pharmacy at Midvalley’s PAC3 (Pharmacy Ambulatory Clinical Care Center), put predictive analytics to work with the help of many. Here, he shares his team's work to reduce readmissions.
Medical errors often occur due to system failure, not human failure. Hospitalist Kencee Graves helps explain why we need to evaluate medical error from a system standpoint.
For years, nurse manager Emily Baarz has mentored millennial nurses joining Neuro Critical Care (NCC). But new nurse graduates weren’t always prepared for the high-acuity setting. So Emily created the Axon/Dendrite program, a mentor-leader model to support her staff’s professional growth.
Kyle Bradford Jones returns with a review of “Quiet,” Susan Cain’s book about the power of introverted thinking. Although introversion is often viewed as a drawback — “a second-class personality trait,” Cain writes — Bradford Jones believes that reassessing his personality type has helped him better understand himself, his co-workers, and even his patients.
Depression is one of those problems so big and so pervasive that tackling it seems impossible. That's why process improvement is so powerful: by setting one goal—improving depression screening rates—11 U of U Health Community Clinics are making the impossible manageable.
Sterile Processing runs a lean operation, and this video produced by value engineer Steve Johnson and video wizard Charlie Ehlert won a national 2018 Telly Award for shedding light on our system’s unseen infection prevention heroes.
Improvement work isn’t easy, especially when it attempts to address rising health care costs. Solid organ transplant coordinator Sharon Ugolini and her team led award-winning work implementing new protocols for common tests. That led to more than just reduced patient charges, though — ordering appropriate tests increases value and quality, as well.
In her five years at University of Utah Health as hospitalist, educator, and medical director of AIM-A and WP5, Karli Edholm led amazing amounts of impactful work. She trained future leaders and improved the safety, experience, and cost of an inpatient stay. Here she shares her lessons for leading and staying focused on improvement: start with your own frustration.
