Director Lora Stratton details how Utah’s Cardiovascular Center leveraged team creativity and rapid problem solving to make—and sustain—the shift to virtual care. Cardiologist Anu Abraham shares what it looks like in practice.
No one likes to be the bearer of bad news—but in health care, it’s part of the job. Fortunately, there’s a simple framework to help us get through it. Hospitalist and UACT co-director Claire Ciarkowski introduces SPIKES: a simple mnemonic for delivering bad news.
Finding evidence to change the status quo isn’t easy; thinking about evidence in terms of how it persuades—whether subjective or objective—can make it easier. Plastic surgery resident Dino Maglić and his colleagues followed their guts and saved money by improving the laceration trays used to treat patients in the emergency department.
Chronic conditions do not pause during a pandemic. When faced with delaying the care of over 1,000 patients with neurological conditions, Susan Baggaley, Neurology Vice Chair and Ambulatory Chief Value Officer, and Vivek Reddy, Neurology Vice Chair and Inpatient Chief Value Officer, rapidly developed a new virtual visit workflow.
Some challenges are so big you have to think in terms of evolution, not solution, to tackle them. Director of Strategy and Workforce Planning (GME) Sri Koduri explains how academic health systems can weather strong and weak labor markets alike by building sustainable bridges between clinical and academic communities.
In this provocative thought piece, hospitalists and system leaders Kencee Graves and Bob Pendleton explain the “team of teams” approach to becoming more nimble, responsive, and adaptable to the demands of our changing world.
Innovative teams solve problems by being curious, not by assigning blame. Environmental Services’ James Mwizerwa and Cooper Riley explain their deliberative approach to the long-standing and complex problem of getting inpatient rooms ready for the next patient.
Utah’s Chief Medical Quality Officer Bob Pendleton describes a strategic challenge faced by many industries, including health care. We are at risk for prioritizing achievement of metrics over our purpose. He challenges us to think beyond metrics to what patients actually need from us: patient-centered, outcome-focused, affordable care.
Changing practice is personal. It doesn’t happen through edict or mandate. Changing practice requires ongoing respectful dialogue. It requires clear vision, data-driven analysis and the support of a dedicated team. Changing practice takes longer that you think it will. In this example, we recognize the power of a partnership in this challenging and important work.
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.
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.
What is the strongest predictor of an effective solution? It’s not the size of the committee or the length of the brainstorming session. The best predictor of successful solutions is how well the problem is understood. Investing time in defining, investigating and analyzing the problem can lead to transformative solutions.
