Almost one year ago the novel coronavirus turned longstanding educational approaches on their heads. Savvy educators responded to the challenge. Learn how U of U Health Medical School faculty pivoted to online learning in just three days, improving long-term education decision-making along the way.
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.
Anesthesiology techs are essential to the care team, but they are challenged by high turnover. Anesthesia resident Michael Van Tienderen, who was a tech for seven years before going to medical school, worked with fellow resident Matt O’Neal, anesthesiologist Emily Drennan, and senior value engineer Cindy Spangler to develop a lasting solution focused on culture change and career growth for these crucial care team members.
“This is why I went into medicine—to talk to my patients and show them humanity.” In the rapid day-to-day clinical setting, that’s harder to find. Utah Advanced Communication Training (UACT) provides practical tools to enhance patient and peer interactions.
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.
It’s a truism: the cost of care is unsustainable. But what’s the fix? In this new series for Accelerate, Zac Watne, Senior Manager of Payment Innovation, interviewed U of U Health leaders to get their thoughts on one of the most controversial fixes making headlines: Medicare for All.
Patients will ask three things of us over the next decade of health care improvement: help me live my best life, make being a patient easier, and make care affordable. To meet those needs health care must shift—from organizing around a patient’s biology to understanding the patient’s biography.
Sometimes the most impactful change comes from simply asking, “Why are we doing things this way?” Pediatric infectious disease professor Adam Hersh explains the impact of practice inertia on antibiotic treatment in pediatric patients, and how questioning the status quo improved outcomes and reduced cost.
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.
Zac Watne returns to answer another variation of the all-too-familiar question: Why is health care so hard to understand? In this post, Zac unravels the bureaucratic and economic transactions that make up the whole health care enchilada.
