Quoteworthy
The time has come to break with tradition. I want to be the kind of leader who can simultaneously guide patients and families through the trials of illness while shepherding trainees on a path of personal discovery and learning in medicine.
Michelle Hofmann

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.

The Bobcast with Dr. Rob Glasgow

In this podcast, our Chief Medical Quality Officer interviews Dr. Rob Glasgow, department of surgery's vice chair of clinical operations and chief value officer. Dr. Glasgow shares how the concept of value transformation provided a clear pathway to build a career that is aligned with why he went into medicine in the first place.

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.

My Team Is My Family

Lawrence Marsco, Director of Inpatient Nursing at Huntsman Cancer Hospital, shares this candid reflection about his tumultuous journey in health care. Today, he relies on shared governance, transparency and shared decision making to lead others through their journey.

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.

Building a Career on Value

Dr. Chris Pelt led one of the first applications of the Value Driven Outcomes (VDO) tool and the University of Utah’s first alternative payment model for joint replacement (the “bundle”). As a junior faculty member he volunteered for the CVO role, and we wondered what drove his early adoption of value. Accelerate's Chrissy Daniels asked him and—in true Pelt fashion—he didn't mince words.

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.