Quoteworthy
What teaming means to me is creating a learning environment where you can make mistakes, pick yourself back up and keep trying to get better. It’s the ability for a group of people to tackle a problem together in a safe-to-fail environment.
Tracey Nixon

Most Recent
What I'm Reading: What Health Care Can Learn from Google

Chief Pharmacy Officer Linda Tyler thinks broadly about the leadership skills needed to deliver reliably safe care. Here, she shares an article about the importance of psychological safety—the #1 success factor identified by Google’s Project Aristotle, which studied hundreds of Google’s teams to figure out why some stumbled and some soared.

Top 5 "Whys" of 2016

We believe that improvement in healthcare needs more connection to what makes this hard work meaningful. That’s why we ask every person who contributes to Accelerate – how did you get into healthcare? There are easier jobs out there, so what keeps you here? Here are a few of our favorite answers.

The Bobcast with Dr. Brigitte Smith

In this podcast, Utah’s Chief Medical Quality Officer interviews Brigitte Smith. A vascular surgeon who joined the University of Utah in 2015, Dr. Smith has quickly become a thought leader in transforming training for future physicians in value (both medical school and residency programs). Their conversation pinpoints an inconvenient truth—we may be a generation away from a culture of value-driven healthcare.

5 Lessons Healthcare Can Learn From Other Industries

In addition to his day job as Director of ENT Clinics, Kirk Hughs orients all new specialty clinic and endoscopy employees to the Exceptional Patient Experience. His goal is to engage new team members about how they can create exceptional experiences for their patients.

What Every Generation Needs

Sarah Sherer is the Director of Employee Relations. We know her as the sounding board, place of last resort and coach for leaders throughout the organization. We asked her to share her wisdom on engaging employees of different ages. What she said might surprise you.

How Utah Chief Value Officers Lead Health Care Transformation

Not even the most gifted leader can lead change alone. No one person can come up with the strategy, communicate across the organization, eliminate all the barriers, and manage dozens of change initiatives. In order for transformation to succeed, you need a guiding coalition.

Why I Do One of the Riskiest Surgeries in Medicine

With so few organs available for transplant, living-donor transplantation introduces improved organ quality, reduced wait times, predictable scheduling, and reduced risk of rejection. But it isn't easy—the investment and risks are huge. Robin Kim, University of Utah Transplant Division Chief, shares his commitment and the complexity of his practice.

PRACTICING: Drs. Graves and Horton (Episode 1)

Real teams are the antidote to the chaos of modern medicine. “Real teams know each other, feel loyalty to one another, trust one another, and would not want to disappoint one another” (Tom Lee, NEJM Catalyst 2016). Practicing are conversations between real team members about why the work matters. Our goal is to preserve and share the stories of the teams at University of Utah Healthcare.

Lessons From The Frontlines

What makes an expert? Best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell gave 10,000 hours as a threshold for expertise. While our University Hospital Customer Service Team isn’t at 10,000 hours, they addressed nearly 2,000 patient concerns this past year. When asked how they do it, Program Assistant Michael Bown offers these top five tools to successfully navigate a phone complaint.

Stories From the Practice of Health Care

Practicing are recorded conversations with a colleague that are shared with the organization. They are conversations between real team members about why the work matters.