If Apple Maps and Garmin can provide just-in-time information, why can’t health care? Lots of legitimate reasons, but we’re making significant strides. This week, the Dojo goes moto as Ken Kawamoto, Associate Chief Medical Information Officer and Director of Knowledge Management and Mobilization, helps us understand how we’re creating better information at the right time.
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.
Pareto analyses separate the vital few from the trivial many. It’s a narrowing tool used by data-driven lean six sigma facilitators to bring focus to a value improvement effort. Steve walks us through an example in today’s Dojo.
This little list is to help lean six sigma (LSS) practitioners communicate more effectively. Communicating is 50-80% of the work in LSS and the concepts are often counterintuitive, so Steve's developed this list to make your life easier—avoid these.
Facilitation is the art of guiding a team through a problem-solving process. It requires a set of skills that can be learned. In this week’s dojo Steve takes on the first of many facilitation topics. This is where we leave the linear process space and enter the equally important but circuitous people space.
If in previous dojo posts, you still haven’t found what you’re looking for, today’s post will satisfy your desire. In it we describe the mysterious ways of Drs. Chris Hull’s and Mark Eliason’s clinic practice. Unless you’re a patient, you can’t witness their clinic, but this post is even better than the real thing.
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.
Why do we like pie charts so much? Because it’s food? Is it the fun colors? Are we soothed by the paradox of an unending cycle implied by something so perfectly complete? Elton John’s lyrics are true, no? “All are agreed as they join the stampede...” pie charts are overused.
In this week’s dojo Steve takes a look back at the Project Charter with a dramatic retelling of actual history.
The Value Summary is the currency of value improvement work at University of Utah Health. It creates a common improvement language through a one-page summary document. It visually guides the improver through our standardized improvement methodology while teaching improvement science principles in real time. The online Value Summary portal creates a forum to share and spread ideas and a path to earn maintenance of certification credit.
Part 1 was on how to build a box and whisker plot. In Part 2 we're defining whisker length and visualizing variation within and between the variable groups. This time we're giving you answers to the questions no one has asked.
What is a box and whisker plot? Why do I need a box and whisker plot? How do I construct a box and whisker plot (sometimes shortened to “box plot”) in Excel 2013 or lower? It's a day in the deep weeds, dojo folks. Steve heard your questions and has dedicated the next two dojos to giving you all the answers.
