Urogynecology specialist Whitney Hendrickson-Cahill details the steps an interdisciplinary team followed to reduce surgical site infections (SSIs) following hysterectomy procedures, aiming to improve patient outcomes, shorten recovery times, and reduce healthcare costs at University of Utah Health.
Magnet program director Gigi Austria and quality manager Dane Falkner explain how problem-solving structures like Shared Governance and Value Culture complement each other. When practiced together, these approaches can be a recipe for optimal outcomes.
Chief Quality Officer Sandi Gulbransen and Accreditation Manager Kemper Funk explain how this umbrella of standards—ISO-9001—relates to our accreditation process and impacts our daily work.
In an organization as big as U of U Health, it’s hard to know where our work fits into the big picture. System Planning Manager Cassandra Taft highlights five ways teams can meaningfully contribute to Operational Plan priorities, regardless of job role or responsibility.
Hospitalist Ryan Murphy and Value Engineer Luca Boi outline four questions to address at the outset of any improvement.
Standard work is the most efficient way to accomplish a job quickly and accurately supported by visual guides. VA internist Sarah Hall and nurse practitioner Jamie Clinton-Lont team up with senior value engineer Luca Boi to share how they used standard work to make pain management safer for veterans.
Your gut tells you a process could be better than it is—how do you back that feeling up with hard data? Senior value engineer Luca Boi shows how undertaking a baseline analysis can jumpstart your improvement project.
Intensive Outpatient Clinic Physician Stacey Bank, Social Worker Christina Cackler, and Executive Medical Director of Population Health Peter Weir share what it took to build an integrated practice and why it pays to innovate for patient-centered care.
Utilization Review is a necessary, but oftentimes messy process that ensures patients are receiving the most appropriate care in the most appropriate setting. Jenny Tuan, hospitalist and medical director of Utilization Review, dissects what UR is all about, including confusing gray areas and sticky pain points.
Safety as a value requires a cultural shift, not just getting people to talk about patient safety but to know how it impacts everything we do. U of U Health’s Director of Patient Safety Iona Thraen draws from the personal to highlight a system-based approach for moving from reactive to proactive patient safety.
What is “Value Management” and why should you care? It's how University of Utah Health systematically improves the quality of care delivered to patients—and its never been more important as we redesign care during a pandemic. Chief Quality Officer Sandi Gulbransen shares the seven tenets of Value Management that guide our work.
Value culture encourages us to look for and resolve our day-to-day problems and inefficiencies by asking, “What’s the pebble in my shoe?” But what happens when the pebble is in the patient’s shoe? Recent biomedical engineering grad Kyler Hodgson, operations manager Sarah Burton, and gastroenterology chief John Fang share how listening to patients can result in solutions that meet patient needs.
