Why Your Whole Team Should Attend the Annual Vizient Conference by Hurley Smith
Peer accountability, when used for good vs evil, can be a powerful force to drive teams towards moonshot goals. Consider attending the Vizient Connections Summit with your team. Not only will it deliver constancy of purpose, but it might not cost you or your institution anything. That’s right. Vizient will pay for your air, hotel, and most of your meals if you present on a topic. Please take the time to write up the amazing work you’re already doing and try something new with your team.
Bundle Up! Surgical Site Infection Prevention Bundle – Normothermia by Heidi Chan
Evidence demonstrates adherence to a surgical site infection (SSI) prevention bundle is correlated with SSI reduction. Adherence to present SSI prevention bundle has not been evaluated and monitored, limiting ability to improve compliance.
Improving Blood Pressure Control in Stanford Stroke Clinic by Anirudh Sreekrishnan
Hypertension is a principal target for secondary stroke prevention, but only a minority of patients with a history of acute stroke have blood pressure under control (less than 130/80) when seen in outpatient follow-up in Stanford Stroke Clinic.
Decreasing Overbook Appointments – Cancer Infusion by Janice Kolsovsky
The Cancer Infusion areas have too many overbooks (definition in background), leading to delays in treatment for patients and schedules over-capacity during peak hours of operation.
Increasing Reporting of Therapy Safety Events in Radiation Oncology by Hilary Bagshaw
There has been a downward trend of safety events reported by Radiation Therapists through Radiation Oncology’s internal incident reporting system, Safety Through Alertness and Reaction (STAR).
Optimizing the Cardiac Clearance Process in Head & Neck Surgery by Julia Noel
Receiving clearance forms and instructions less than 1 week in advance of surgery can result in time intensive and herculean staff efforts to avoid surgery cancellation or issues. This has implications for patient safety and cancer outcomes as well as resource utilization. We chose this project to focus on because of the direct impact on our workflow and was able to be intervened upon in a meaningful way.
Decreasing Time in ICU & Time to Mobility in Cardiothoracic Surgery (CTS) Patients by Adam Andruska
Cardiothoracic surgery (CTS) patients require highly coordinated care by numerous services in the intensive care unit (ICU) after surgery. Complications in this time period increase morbidity, are costly, and significantly increase time spent in the ICU. We set out to shorten the time between cardiothoracic surgery and the patient ambulating with physical therapy as a marker for appropriate patient progress. Delays in time to ambulation after surgery reflect both patient complications and systems issues preventing progression. Our goal was to improve the percentage of patients ambulating on postoperative day one from 60% to greater than 70%.
“I Wanna Go FAST!” Reducing Time to Advanced Imaging in Pediatric Musculoskeletal Infections by Elad Nevo
For patients with osteomyelitis, septic arthritis, or pyomyositis, increased time from ED presentation to performing advanced imaging (MRI) can delay diagnostic and therapeutic orthopedic procedures (i.e., bone biopsy, joint aspiration, etc.).
SEEing More Patients in the OR at the Byer’s Eye Institute by Nicole Choo
Many patients at Byers wait months for surgeries despite the fact that some OR rooms are only partially utilized every week. It minimizes patient dissatisfaction, maximizes OR utilization, and keeps our providers schedules full.
Improving Surgical Site Infections: Warming One Patient At a Time by Dominique Watt
Despite having Surgical Site Infection Prevention bundles in place, there is a recent increase in Standardized Infection Ratio (SIRs) for colorectal patients in SHC. A recent discovery that OR room temperatures are not consistently in range which may potentially impact maintaining patient body temperature above 36 C.
