Society for Health Systems Newsletter

March 2015

YOUR newsletter is YOUR source of information about what is happening in your IIE Society and in Healthcare

#SHS2015 was a huge success

From Feb. 18-20, more than 400 SHS members convened in Orlando, Florida, for the annual Healthcare Systems Process Improvement Conference. The conference was a great success! From pre-conference workshops on Wednesday to the Student Paper Competition on Thursday and cross-industry knowledge sharing on Friday, there was more knowledge shared than hours in the day!

View winners of competitions (Poster, Student Paper, Student Simulation, SHS Scholarship, Social Media, YouTube Video)

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/index.cfm?pgid=58

SHS2015 Highlight: Customization vs. convenience when developing healthcare scheduling tools

Provider scheduling is an important challenge in almost any clinical environment. Industrial engineering- and operations research-based decision support tools can be very valuable, not only in reducing the workload of producing these schedules, but in greatly enhancing their quality. Continue reading

CDC: Progress being made in infection control in U.S. hospitals

As hospitals' focus on reducing infections has intensified, central line-associated bloodstream infections fell by 46 percent between 2008 and 2013, according to the National and State Healthcare-Associated Infections Progress Report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Continue reading

Visualizing Data at Piedmont Healthcare

April 28 | 2 p.m. Eastern time

Presenter: Mark Jackson, manager business intelligence, Piedmont Healthcare

Mark Jackson is currently the manager of business intelligence at Piedmont Healthcare in Atlanta. He has been with Piedmont since 2010. Jackson previously spent six years with KPMG where he assisted a number of Fortune 1000 companies in both an advisory and an audit capacity.

This webinar will describe how Piedmont established a robust business intelligence program to support over 130 data workers with very limited resources. Piedmont is transforming the culture from one where data lagged by months, which caused many decisions to be made on gut feel, to one where data is always at our fingertips.

More information and registration

The hospital CEO's ultimate dashboard: What to check each day, quarter and year

Patient Satisfaction guru Quint Studer describes the CEO's "ultimate" dashboard in a recent Becker's Hospital Review article. The dashboard is a concise selection of metrics for laser-focusing on the issues that drive results. These metrics fall into four "buckets:" productivity, volume, clinical quality and service.

Member Milestones

Please join us in congratulating the following members for their continued service and membership with Society for Health Systems.

These members have been completed milestone years of service to the society in the month of March 2015.

Laboratory Cost Improvement: Achieve cost savings using labor productivity and expense

This recent presentation provides an approach for labor and non-labor cost reduction using internal and external benchmarks. The benchmarks are based on extensive experience by the author's organization. The presentation includes productivity benchmarks for the various types of specialties within the typical hospital lab.

Fancy hospitals often fail to impress patients

Hospital executives across the country have justified expensive renovation and expansion projects believing they will lead to better patient reviews and recommendations. Patient satisfaction has become even more important since Medicare started to base some of its reimbursement on patient surveys.

Many medicare quality bonuses wiped out by penalties

Of the hospitals graded by Medicare on quality, 1,700 (55 percent) received bonuses for providing comparatively good care based on such criteria as patient satisfaction.

Simulation in Healthcare Architecture Series No. 1

What can simulation do for your health system?

Discrete event simulation is a powerful analysis tool that allows users to test different options with real data before a decision is made. While simulation can benefit various industries, this post focuses on the specific advantages of using it in healthcare facilities. Health systems can use simulation to answer questions about changes to processes, configurations or staffing levels. Without the aid of simulation, facilities often never make these changes because it would be too costly to reorder process steps or test new configurations.

SHS Newsletter Team

Lauren Milne

Editor