Society for Health Systems Newsletter

August 2010

Contribute to the Newsletter !

The SHS newsletter team is always on the lookout for new content relevant to professionals working in the healthcare improvement field. To contribute articles, interviews, book reviews, presentations, or to make staff aware of members in the news, ideas for future content, or other newsworthy content please contact Bart Sellers.
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Former SHS president Dr. Vinod Sahney awarded the 2010 Frank and Lillian Gilbreth award

Vinod Sahney

The Frank and Lillian Gilbreth award is the highest lifetime achievement honor awarded by the Institute of Industrial Engineering. Vin has a doctorate degree from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, a Master's degree from Purdue, and a Bachelors degree from the Birla Institute of Technology in Ranchi, India. After graduating from Purdue and Wisconsin, Vin worked for several years at Wayne State University as a tenured IE faculty focusing on healthcare systems. He then joined Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, Michigan where he worked for 25 years ultimately achieving the role of Senior Vice President. To read the entire article or to view Vin's acceptance speech

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SHS member awarded prestigious Gilbreth Memorial Scholarship at Annual IIE Conference in Cancún

SHS member, volunteer, and frequent contributor, Ms. Ashley Benedict, is a recipient of a $3,000 Gilbreth Memorial Scholarship from the Institute of Industrial Engineers. Ashley received her B.S. (2003) and M.S. (2006) from the University of Florida in Industrial and Systems Engineering. She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. from Purdue University in the area of human factors applied to healthcare. To learn more about scholarship opportunities from IIE click here.

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John Toussaint, MD on Lean and return on investment, "What I get concerned about when lean is broken down to ROI is that people miss the whole point of what the methodology is about...."

In a recent interview by Pat Panchak on the LeanROI.org website, Dr. Toussaint provides an authoritative perspective on assessing long and short term return on investment in lean transformations. Toussaint is CEO emeritus of the Wisconsin-based ThedaCare health system and CEO of the ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value. He was an early leader in introducing lean into healthcare. To read this interview of the LeanROI.org website click here.

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Improving hospital-wide patient flow at St. Francis Hospitals and Health Centers in Indiana

In a presentation at the 2010 SHS/ASQ Healthcare Division Conference, Matthew Pierce, Nursing Manager, and Joseph Swartz, Director of Business Transformation, presented on improving hospital-wide patient flow using a Define Measure Analyze Improve and Control (DMAIC) framework. Among many of the improvements cited was a 60% reduction in delays for critical care admissions from the ED. To read the entire article

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Emergency department operations: The basis for developing a simulation tool

by David Sinreich and Yariv Marmor

In this paper originally published in IIE Transactions, the authors describe a foundational approach for simulation modeling of Emergency Departments that is general, simple, intuitive and easy to use. To read the paper click here.

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Lessons from the trenches: Implementation of an automated patient safety system

by Mark Montgomery M.D., St. Joseph Health System and Douglas Dotan M.A., CRG Medical, Inc.

In this presentation given at the 2010 SHS/ASQ Healthcare Division Conference, the authors describe how a Baldrige Award winning hospital implemented a paperless continuous improvement patient safety system. The system is used for collecting patient safety events, and analysis, performance improvement, classification, and organizational knowledge building involving every single employee in the healthcare system. The automated patient system has dramatically improved event reporting and streamlined the analysis and follow-up. To read the entire story click here.

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SHS co-sponsors third annual Mayo Clinic Conference on systems engineering & operations research in healthcare

Mayo Clinic is pleased to announce its third annual conference on systems engineering and operations research in healthcare, to be held from Aug. 18-20 in Rochester, Minn. The primary audience for this conference includes physicians, administrators and managers, allied health providers, healthcare systems engineers, operations research professionals and SE/OR academics. The conference website gives more details and registration information.

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