Real teams are the antidote to the chaos of modern medicine. “Real teams know each other, feel loyalty to one another, trust one another, and would not want to disappoint one another” (Tom Lee, NEJM Catalyst 2016). Practicing are conversations between real team members about why the work matters. Our goal is to preserve and share the stories of the teams at University of Utah Healthcare.
In this article, Dr. Patrick Conway, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Chief Medical Officer, and others write about how the three goals of the past Health and Human Services administration are at the heart of improving healthcare.
Why dedicate space to the hot poker that is health law and policy on this website? Context. We are an improvement community. We believe providing context is an act of respect. Talking about "the why" of complex healthcare topics (payment reform included) allows our frontline clinicians and staff to be empowered and informed.
Former Lieutenant Governor Greg Bell on how congressional inaction could limit hospitals and doctors’ ability to provide healthcare in Utah (Photo credit: KUER, Utah Governor's Office).
The 8th waste is underutilization of employee talent. In this week's post of Steve's Dojo (or continuing Lean Six Sigma education), Steve revisits Taiichi Ohno’s "7 wastes" and answers why he doesn't teach the "8th waste" at University of Utah.
Just under 40,000 pieces of physical equipment keep our hospital system humming—everything from hospital beds to air chillers. Casey Chandler manages the team that takes care of all 40,000 items. Here, he details the tools that keep us safe.
What if you could redesign healthcare from the ground up? If you were to start with the healthcare value-added test applied to each decision, what would healthcare delivery look, sound, and feel like? Would you be able to shake off the preconceived notions of what it takes to run a healthcare system? Would hospitals be recognizable? In this week's post of Steve's Dojo (or continuing Lean Six Sigma education), we revisit the healthcare value-added test.
Medical errors are a leading cause of death in the United States. What can we do to ensure our patients aren’t harmed while in our care? Former Chief Medical Quality Officer Bob Pendleton reflects on a simple concept to begin the conversation.
The sepsis case study focused on the leadership challenges faced by hospitalists Kencee Graves and Devin Horton. This post is about the project’s technical achievement using a process improvement principle. Our system taught Epic, Utah’s electronic medical record (EMR) how to provide urgent, life-saving information to clinicians.
Complete archive of the lean six sigma training series: Steve's Dojo.
Chief Pharmacy Officer Linda Tyler thinks broadly about the leadership skills needed to deliver reliably safe care. Here, she shares an article about the importance of psychological safety—the #1 success factor identified by Google’s Project Aristotle, which studied hundreds of Google’s teams to figure out why some stumbled and some soared.
In this podcast, our Chief Medical Quality Officer interviews Dr. Rob Glasgow, department of surgery's vice chair of clinical operations and chief value officer. Dr. Glasgow shares how the concept of value transformation provided a clear pathway to build a career that is aligned with why he went into medicine in the first place.
