Quoteworthy
We’re solution generators. We want to implement a million things right away, but what we don't do is pause, take a moment, and say, 'Let's define the problem.'
Tom Varghese

Most Recent
Spend Time Thinking Slow

Kyle Bradford Jones is back, this time with a deep dive into decision-making. Jones uses psychology to explain why it takes so long to adopt new evidence into our clinical practice and argues that we need to actively schedule time together in order to reflect.

Patient Experience 101: Engaging Your Team With Data

Improvement in patient experience is often the hardest part of managers’ jobs. It takes consistent work engaging your team. There are no shortcuts. In this occasional series, we’ll be sharing the lessons learned the hard way from people working on the front lines to deliver care. In this post, Urology and Pelvic Care outpatient services manager Leslie Bardsley gives practical advice for involving your entire team in improvement.

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 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.

Dr. Sean Stokes on Improving Opioid Prescribing Patterns

Using improvement methodology to solve one piece of America’s opioid epidemic. Dr. Sean Stokes and team used the practice of scoping to focus on one population and one procedure to achieve manageable, measurable improvement.

Can Netflix Help Us Choose a Physician?

Dr. Kyle Bradford Jones examines the Netflix algorithm for user preference as a model for developing provider selection tools that match patient values with their care needs.

Reasons to Build a Process Map

It’s part 2 of 4 in our series on process mapping. This post is about the reasons to build a process map. They’re inexpensive and so very often bear fruit for your effort.

Common Facilitation Challenges When Process Mapping

It’s the third consecutive post in the Dojo’s summer of process mapping. Today I discuss 4 common facilitation issues LSS practitioners can avoid prior to, and during a mapping effort.

How Utah Ophthalmology Analyzed Wait Time to Find a Better Solution

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.