Society for Health Systems Newsletter

March 2016

Heathcare Systems Process Improvement Conference 2016

The Society of Health Systems would like to thank all of our attendees, exhibitors and sponsors for another great Healthcare Systems Process Improvement Conference! We hope you enjoyed the conference and are returning to work refreshed and energized with new ideas you can immediately put into practice. We hope to see you again March 1-3, 2017, in Orlando, Fla.

If you were not able to attend this year (or even if you did and want to see the sessions you missed), please take some time to review the content our wonderful presenters have shared at the conference website here: https://www.xcdsystem.com/shs/proceedings/

A huge congratulations to the competition winners:

Graduate Student Paper Competition

Kun Want, Arizona State University

Parallon Scholarship

Emily Collins, Kansas State University

FlexSim Student Simulation Contest

Louisiana State University - "GEAUX FlexSim"

Justin Neilson, Dana Scalf and Michael Toler

Hyun Jeon, Faculty Advisor

HSPIC Poster Competition

Industry Award Winner: Ashley Robinson, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Outpatient Exam Room Allocation Process
Undergraduate Student Award Winner: Paige Mollison University of Michigan, Scheduling Healthcare Providers
Graduate Student Award Winner: Julie Charron-Latour Polytechnique Montréal, Implementation of a Computer-aided Employee Suggestion Management System in Healthcare Organization
People's Choice: Ben Wilk, OhioHealth, Clinic Access - Standardized Provider Schedule Templates to Increase Capacity

SHS/HIMSS Excellence in Management Engineering and Process Improvement Award

Todd Schneider, OhioHealth

Society for Health Systems President's Award

Tarun Mohan Lal, Mayo Clinic

We will be featuring content throughout the year in the newsletter. Look forward to some great examples of conference proceedings.

Mark your calendar for SHS State of the State Meeting!

After an exciting 2016 Healthcare Systems Process Improvement Conference, the SHS Board would like to share the Strategic Initiatives and new Committee Structure. Tune in for our webinar, the State of SHS on Tuesday March 22, 2016 from 2-3 EST.

In this session, current and future members will receive an update on the society's mission and vision, as well as recent accomplishments and future direction as determined by the Board of Directors. Time will be allotted in this webinar for questions and answers from the membership.

Presenters: Joyce Siegele, director, productivity management, Northside Hospital and Amanda Mewborn, executive director, project management office, Piedmont Healthcare.

More information and registration

Conference Highlight: Implementing an Emergency Department Patient Split Flow

With Emergency Department volume doubling the past 5 years, Long Island Jewish Medical Center (LIJMC) was faced with the decision to invest $30 million to expand their ED or develop an improved process within the existing environment. LIJMC chose the latter and implemented a split flow process with dramatic results. View the presentation.

SHS News Watch

A Surgery Center That Doubles as an Idea Lab

"A laboratory for continuous improvement". That is how staff and administrators describe the new state-of-the-art Josie Robertson Surgery Center at Memorial Sloan Kettering's Cancer Center. They are taking lessons from modern hotel lobbies and other industries to improve patient flow, patient outcomes and the whole patient experience. Things like tracking badges and activity monitors help clinicians track patients and may allow them to hone in on patients who are not recovering as fast as desired. Memorial Sloan Kettering's new Surgery Center is one of many across the country using new approaches to data gathering, analysis and management.

All is not as straightforward as it may look, however, as there are some who argue that there may be ethical challenges, since healthcare organizations are not typically informing patients every time they are trying new techniques and technologies.

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Reducing Preventable Harm in Hospitals

The issue is not whether aviation is like caring for a sick person in a hospital - they are different in many ways. The issue is that aviation has a long history of striving to be an error free industry. In aviation they use check lists but it is a small part. They standardize most activities, and don't worship individual variation. They have a safety culture-training all crew to speak up about safety regardless of where they are in the hierarchy. They investigate every accident in an open way and try and find the root cause. They look for ways each accident provides a way to find a fix in the system.

In some hospitals, including our children's hospital and others in the Children's Hospital's Solutions for Patient Safety (SPS) network, we are trying to achieve a complete shift in our thinking and aiming for zero harm. This approach is based on other high reliability organizations like aviation. We are looking at every source of error and trying to find ways to "engineer" safer approaches. Most importantly, it involves a change in culture where safety is everyone's business, including doctors, nurses, engineers, environmental service staff and administrators. There are no simple fixes - it includes bundles, check lists, behavior change, event review, and lots of dedication.

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Making checklists work: South Carolina's statewide experiment

With a man on the operating table for a laparoscopic gallbladder removal, the surgeon announces "All right, let's get started," and all eyes turn to a poster labeled in jumbo print, " Safe Surgery Checklist," on the wall at the foot of the surgical table. Surgical checklists, an approach drawn from commercial aviation and other high-risk industries, gained popularity when the World Health Organization promoted them in 2007 under the leadership of surgeon and author Dr. Atul Gawande. But they have yet to become widely or systematically adopted.

South Carolina is now the testing ground for a much more focused approach. In 2013, the South Carolina Hospital Association, working with Gawande and the Harvard University School of Public Health, launched a structured initiative to get every hospital in the state to regularly use a pre-surgical safety checklist process.

Check out the full list of IIE Webinars

These free* one-hour presentations are a benefit of your IIE membership. They are presented by knowledgeable professionals and experienced volunteers provide deeper insight into topics and issues involving industrial engineers and industrial engineering-related disciplines.

Find out more!

* Webinars presented by the Society for Health Systems and the Society for Engineering and Management Systems require membership in those societies to attend.

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