JOY IN PRACTICE

Enhancing Joy in Practice and Productivity with a Team-based Solution Improving clinical productivity is an urgent priority for all healthcare organizations. Whipping providers to see more patients is counter productive, but when you eliminate hassles, obstacles to clinic workflow, and minimize EHR admin work, they will happily spend more time on direct patient care. SigmaMed’s “Joy in Practice” Transformation was designed to rapidly improve clinical productivity within the framework of a report…

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Eliminating the “Fix-it Factory”

Many studies show that all organizations operate with from 25-50% of their activity dedicated to fixing mistakes created by other parts of the organization.   This is what is called the “Fix-it Factory” in Lean literature and it represents a total waste of time and money. Health care is no different and many non-safety critical processes run at the high end of this range.  It is discouraging to see so many…

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PCMH house with caring hands

PCMH – Transforming or Tweaking Your Practice?

In our experience, the single greatest predictor of success in attaining Patient Centered Medical Home (PCMH) recognition is whether you begin with the intention of transforming your practice, or simply of tweaking it. Transforming or Tweaking. Which is Better?

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Teenagers Outperform Corporations in Decision-making

Did you know teenagers outperform corporations in decision-making?  A study found that 30% of teenagers consider more than one option, while only 29% of corporations considered more than one option when making decisions.  Which of the two statements below applies to teenagers and which applies to corporations? Less than 30% of decisions were effective 83% of decisions lost money They both sound like my teenagers, but both apply to corporations!…

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Recruitment of Qualified Nursing Staff and Lean Six Sigma

One of my rural hospital contacts recently identified “recruitment of qualified nursing staff” as a major issue in his/her hospital.  You may share this concern —a study from 2008 by Deana Molinari and Maria Monserud states CAHs identify “filling nurse vacancies as their number one concern” (http://www.rrh.org.au/articles/subviewnew.asp?ArticleID=1055).  The study went on to identify attributes to CAH nurse recruitment.  If you are running a CAH, this study is worth reading.  …

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