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.
It’s been almost three years since Accelerate began (wow!). We thought it was a good time for an update. If you've been here before, you'll see that we’ve made changes to the site based directly on your feedback. Here we share how we've improved the site. Thank you for sharing your opinions, and keep them coming!
Improvement isn’t just for one area of academic medicine. The right improvement can mean improved patient and trainee experience, reduced cost and a more engaged staff. Nurse Manager Bernice Tenort, physician Brett Einerson, and an interdisciplinary team ended up solving many challenges by tackling a long-standing problem: wait time in labor and delivery.
Value Week is a unique collaborative event that brings together U of U Health’s improvement community to recognize the important and impactful work conducted throughout our organization.
Chief Medical Quality Officer Bob Pendleton kicks off our week-long celebration of improvement and community during University of Utah Health Value Week.
Changing practice is personal. It doesn’t happen through edict or mandate. Changing practice requires ongoing respectful dialogue. It requires clear vision, data-driven analysis and the support of a dedicated team. Changing practice takes longer that you think it will. In this example, we recognize the power of a partnership in this challenging and important work.
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.
Whether it means patients’ “experience”, patients’ “satisfaction” or “patient-centered”, service reflects the patients’ perspective.
Director of Patient Experience Mari Ransco and Chief Medical Officer of Ambulatory Health Richard Orlandi give a primer on the future of exceptional patient experience at University of Utah Health.
