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.
What does it mean to take a system approach to problems? The discipline to learn as a team, patience to wade through hundreds of cases, and a diversity of perspectives. Utah’s Critical Care Senior Nursing Director Colleen Connelly, System Quality, Patient Safety, and Value Senior Director Sandi Gulbransen, and Associate Chief Medical Quality Officer Kencee Graves reflect on what they’ve learned by studying system problems with an interdisciplinary team.
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.
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.
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.
Every year, Cindy Spangler hosts ‘Friendsgiving’ for over forty friends, family, and work colleagues. Cindy is also a senior value engineer and associate editor for Accelerate. So we asked: what is the process behind a successful Thanksgiving?
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.
Preventing medication errors often means using checklists and leveraging technology. But implementing these seemingly simple tools requires interdisciplinary teamwork, learning, and a commitment to ongoing verification that the process is working. Clinical operations nursing director Joy Lombardi describes how Huntsman Cancer Institute made chemotherapy highly reliable.
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.
Chief Medical Quality Officer Bob Pendleton kicks off our week-long celebration of improvement and community during University of Utah Health Value Week.
Senior Value Engineer Luca Boi applies the Lean concept of waste to health care and explains how learning to see the “Seven Wastes” can help focus your efforts.
