Is zero possible? In the case of central line infections, the answer was once no. A CLABSI (central line associated blood stream infection) was once considered a car crash, or an expected inevitability of care. When University of Utah’s Burn Trauma Intensive Care Unit started treating CLABSIs like a plane crash, or a tragedy demanding in-depth investigation and cultural change, zero became possible.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The dojo welcomes guest author and senior value engineer Will McNett with a deep dive into clinic capacity utilization. McNett borrows from manufacturing to offer a framework to measure and increase what really matters to patients: time spent with their provider.
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.
Process mapping is easy. But also hard. This is a common conundrum with value improvement. Here's part 1 of 4, wherein rules are distinguished from guidance.
We asked Zac Watne, Utah’s payment innovation manager (he gets paid to understand the volatile world of payment reform) to give us a primer on “bundles.” Regardless of change happening in health care, thought leaders predict that payment reform, and specifically bundled payments, are here to stay. Why? Bundles deliver care with improved outcomes at a lower price all over the United States. In this post, Zac predicts the future of bundles.
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.
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.
The joint replacement team—Drs. Pelt, Gililland, Peters, PA Jill Erickson, and clinic manager Piper Ferrell—explain why going home after a joint replacement is better than going to a post-acute care facility. Their data shows that going home means better value for the patient: a healthier recovery at a lower cost.
