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What’s a Ski Season with No Snow?

Value engineer Cindy Spangler has shared her camping and canyoneering expertise with Accelerate in the past. But this winter, her preparation may have done us in: a big purchase of new ski equipment has led to a lackluster snow season. Or has it? Cindy reviews why correlation does not imply causation.

The Formula For Transforming Health Care

Ever had an idea everyone agrees with but still takes a year to implement? Nutrition Services Director Carissa Christensen faced a dilemma as she developed a weight management program for patients struggling with obesity: even after you’ve defined your vision, how do you engage an entire system in an ambitious improvement project?

Creating a Culture of Civility

Three years ago, an internal study found that Huntsman Cancer Institute employees experienced significant compassion fatigue. Director of Nursing Services Sue Childress teamed up with HCI executives, providers, and managers to combat burnout by promoting conscientious leadership and a culture of civility.

The Science of Scheduling

Delivering a great health care experience is only possible with one crucial component: reliable scheduling. It’s such an essential part of efficient operations, in fact, that the University of Utah Health created an access optimization team to help providers across the system.

Celebrate Signal, Drown Out Noise

To celebrate the New Year, Value Engineer Mitch Cannon applied statistics to weight loss. He was quickly reminded of an important lesson that applies in health care: when you’re trying to improve, don’t overreact to data.

How to Avoid Two Common Biases

Balancing uncertainty, fear, and emotions isn’t easy — especially in health care. Family practice physician Kyle Bradford Jones looks outside of his practice to identify two common biases that affect how we behave in the face of perceived risk. His key insight? The risk that isn’t directly in front of us may be mistaken for no risk at all.

Holiday Gift Wrapping the High Reliability Way

First came High Reliability Thanksgiving. Then High Reliability Camping. In keeping with the Lean holiday spirit, Accelerate’s Marcie Hopkins shares her method for high reliability gift wrapping — with a little help from our friends in Sterile Processing, who’ve perfected the envelope fold.

Accelerate's Best of 2017

Just over one year ago, we launched Accelerate – University of Utah Health’s improvement community. Here are the “Top 3” articles from 2017 selected by the 16,673 members of our burgeoning community.

The Wisdom of Leaders: How to Cultivate Teams

Leaders embody U of U Health’s focus on patient-centered care, respect for people, and continued improvement. Recently, Jessica Rivera, Carissa Christensen, Sue Childress, and Tracy Farley described their efforts to deliver a better health care experience for patients by taking care of their teams. In advance of individual articles from each leader, below are four big takeaways that can be put into action today.

Improving Wellness: 40 Champions, 20 Projects, 12 Months of Progress

A year ago, University of Utah Health decided to tackle a major problem in health care today: burnout. Forty people – and their teams – spread across an enormous health system took on the challenge. We sat down with family physician and co-director of the Resiliency Center Amy Locke to learn about what works in improving faculty and staff wellness.

How Technology and Teamwork Improve Patient Experience

Managing patients’ expectations is often a euphemism for pragmatically preventing disappointment. But Melissa Briley, physician assistant at Redstone Health Center, integrates technology, teamwork, and clinic flow processes to reduce the uncertainty that comes from waiting for test results or instructions from a provider.

Lean Behind the Scenes: Sterile Processing

Sterile Processing runs a lean operation, delivering millions of instruments to University of Utah Health’s procedural teams. Director of value engineering Steve Johnson, assisted by the video wizardry of Charlie Ehlert, sheds light on our system’s unseen infection prevention heroes.