Quoteworthy
When there have been opportunities to share ideas, people are hungry for it. They love to teach and to learn from each other. They build relationships with each other that end up producing solutions that meet patient needs.
Chrissy Daniels, Mari Ransco, Brittany Patterson

Most Recent
Why Don’t We Teach the Eighth Waste?

The 8th waste is underutilization of employee talent. In this week's post of Steve's Dojo (or continuing Lean Six Sigma education), Steve revisits Taiichi Ohno’s "7 wastes" and answers why he doesn't teach the "8th waste" at University of Utah.

The Healthcare Value-Added Test

What if you could redesign healthcare from the ground up? If you were to start with the healthcare value-added test applied to each decision, what would healthcare delivery look, sound, and feel like? Would you be able to shake off the preconceived notions of what it takes to run a healthcare system? Would hospitals be recognizable? In this week's post of Steve's Dojo (or continuing Lean Six Sigma education), we revisit the healthcare value-added test.

Lean Guard Rails: Using the EMR as a forcing function

The sepsis case study focused on the leadership challenges faced by hospitalists Kencee Graves and Devin Horton. This post is about the project’s technical achievement using a process improvement principle. Our system taught Epic, Utah’s electronic medical record (EMR) how to provide urgent, life-saving information to clinicians.

Steve's Dojo: Continuing Lean Six Sigma Education

Complete archive of the lean six sigma training series: Steve's Dojo.

Top 3 Data-Driven Tips for Holiday Travel

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.

The Standard Work For Saying Thank You

Standard work is a visual guide to accomplish a job quickly and accurately. We asked our resident etiquette expert, Patient Advisor Mary Martha Tripeny, to put this Lean tool to the test by creating standard work for thank you notes. The holidays are stressful enough. This year, when nagging your children to write thank you notes, give Mary Martha’s standard work a try.

How a Surgical Unit Improved Response to Call Lights

Improving patient experience often starts with survey questions and comments, but reliance on these elements alone can be insufficient. Incorporating the voice and experience of the patient can provide a deeper understanding of the problem and unlock more effective solutions.

How Utah Develops an Operational Plan

Translating strategic priorities into everyday execution across a large, complex enterprise might seem daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. Our Operational Plan is a blueprint that combines processes, tools, knowledge, and skills to deliver on these priorities.

Tom Lee Exclusive

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.

What the Hard Work of Bundled Care Really Looks Like

It’s clear that fee-for-service health care isn't working—so what alternative payment model does?

Curating Value: Archiving Utah's Exceptional Improvement Work

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.

Cracking the Code on Better, More Affordable Care

Health care organizations and providers have some understanding what they charge for care. But nationally, providers have a “complete lack of understanding” about the costs of health care, according to Michael Porter, Ph.D., and Robert Kaplan, Ph.D., ("The Big Idea: How to Solve the Cost Crisis in Health Care").