Internal medicine residents Brian Sanders and Matt Christensen team up with senior value engineer Luca Boi to explain why investing your time honing a well-defined problem statement can pay dividends later in the ultimate success of a QI project.
Standard work is the most efficient way to accomplish a job quickly and accurately supported by visual guides. VA internist Sarah Hall and nurse practitioner Jamie Clinton-Lont team up with senior value engineer Luca Boi to share how they used standard work to make pain management safer for veterans.
SMART Goals are a great starting point for any project. Project management expert Kripa Kuncheria helps us organize our teams’ efforts by outlining this goal setting framework with a simple step-by-step guide to try right now.
Your gut tells you a process could be better than it is—how do you back that feeling up with hard data? Senior value engineer Luca Boi shows how undertaking a baseline analysis can jumpstart your improvement project.
In an organization as big as U of U Health, it’s hard to know where our work fits into the big picture. System Planning Manager Cassandra Taft highlights five ways teams can meaningfully contribute to Operational Plan priorities, regardless of job role or responsibility.
Utilization Review is a necessary, but oftentimes messy process that ensures patients are receiving the most appropriate care in the most appropriate setting. Jenny Tuan, hospitalist and medical director of Utilization Review, dissects what UR is all about, including confusing gray areas and sticky pain points.
Every Thanksgiving, Accelerate’s Marcie Hopkins makes not just one, but multiple pies to enjoy. To maximize efficiency, she teamed up with Farmington manager Matt Sanford to design the perfect process. And—of course—there’s a health care application as well.
Performing a rapid critical appraisal helps evaluate a study for its worth by ensuring validity, meaningful data, and significance to the patient. Contributors Barb Wilson, Mary Jean Austria, and Tallie Casucci share a checklist of questions to complete a rapid critical appraisal efficiently and effectively.
Hospitalist Ryan Murphy introduces quality improvement (QI): The systematic and continuous approach to improvement.
Every summer, senior value engineer Cindy Spangler stocks our offices with an abundance of tomatoes, zucchini, and squash. We asked her to share how improvement thinking influences her gardening. Turns out, there are parallels–learn from others, stick to your scope, and learn from the mistakes.
Every summer, Utahns head to the mountains for camping, biking, rafting and other activities. And every summer, many a family is left without a stove, or a helmet, or a…because it was left at home. Thrill-seeker and value engineer Cindy Spangler wants to prevent your next packing mishap with a customized camping checklist.
The Zero Suicide initiative has been shown to significantly reduce suicides—and working toward zero suicides is our mission. Rachael Jasperson, Zero Suicide program manager, shares the framework for how we strive for this aspirational goal.
