Engineer Cindy Spangler compares canyoneering and surgery and identifies a common thread: the need for high-reliability processes. She describes how surgical time-out, a quick huddle to debrief before surgery, can serve as a useful model for reducing the risk of harm in canyoneering.
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.
Improving value in health care means tackling long-standing problems. These problems have seemingly simple solutions, but just won’t stay fixed. Fixing the old problems of health care requires new problem solving skills. Nurse manager Jamie D’Ausilio used University of Utah Health’s value improvement methodology to confront one of the most common management challenges—unnecessary overtime. Using concepts from lean and six sigma, D’Ausilio identified waste, prioritized root causes, and engaged her team to design interventions to create new workflow design.
When a mistake happens, we promise we will never let it happen again. The problem is that a personal vow doesn’t change the way the system operates. Value engineers Steve Johnson, Cindy Spangler and Will McNett look at common personal incident—backing into the lamppost in your own front yard—as a lens for eliminating risk.
Just under 40,000 pieces of physical equipment keep our hospital system humming—everything from hospital beds to air chillers. Casey Chandler manages the team that takes care of all 40,000 items. Here, he details the tools that keep us safe.
Medical errors are a leading cause of death in the United States. What can we do to ensure our patients aren’t harmed while in our care? Former Chief Medical Quality Officer Bob Pendleton reflects on a simple concept to begin the conversation.
Healthcare isn’t the only industry experiencing whiplash-inducing change. Think about the significant change in the way we travel. We used to hear about a place or a particular hotel from a travel agent or friend, or gasp—the phone book. Today, the number of sites offering advice, recommendations and resources is astounding. In this post, we’re highlighting a few tried and true resources that leverage big data to make travel easier.
Follow Utah’s Nutrition Care Services as they produce and deliver over 300 lunches to inpatients all over our hospital, all at the same time. The work of this exceptional team highlights a complex lean operation that—before now—has largely gone unseen.
Chief Medical Officer of Press Ganey Tom Lee reminds us that value does not happen by accident, and good intentions are not enough. The goal of improving value has to be a major focus for everyone in an organization.
For years, the Exceptional Value Annual Report documented the performance of the organization on all 45 of the key initiatives identified in the Operational Plan.
