Stanford Medicine Community of Improvement Professionals
(SCIP)

This month, we learned from Ryan Darke and Jen Murray about keys to present a poster at a conference and the group discussed a real case study. Click here for the full recording.

At our July meeting, we discussed a recent article in HBR, “To Improve Health Care, Focus on Fixing Systems – Not People,” by Kedar Mate, Josh Clark and Jeff Salvon-Harmon. Click here for the full recording.

Our June Meeting focused on networking and learning about each others biggest failures, successes and book recommendations. If you’d like to hear the discussion, click here for the recording.

Contact Ryan Darke (rdarke@stanfordhealthcare.org) to learn more about SCIP.

"It really is about becoming the best at getting better!"

Are you passionate about driving positive change in healthcare? Join our vibrant community where improvement professionals from Stanford Medicine and beyond connect, collaborate, and transform together. Our monthly virtual meetings provide the perfect platform to share innovative ideas, network with like-minded individuals, and build a strong community focused on revolutionizing healthcare. Expand your knowledge, foster meaningful connections, and access valuable resources to enhance your professional journey. Be part of the movement that is shaping the future of medicine.

Mission: To provide a venue for Improvement Professionals to develop each other in service of our vision to be the best at getting better.

Meet our SCIP Planning Team
“Thanks for starting this. Great idea and something many of us have been wanting for a while. I thought the presentations and small group discussions were effective.”
Karthik Balakrishnan, MD, MPH, FAAP, FACS
Associate Professor of Otolaryngology at Stanford Children's Health

Four Pillars of SCIP

Why we created this community of practice

  1. To connect the various improvement entities throughout Stanford Medicine
  2. To provide an informal venue to connect people and ideas
  3. To further drive the mission of improvement capability while allowing for personal investment and growth
  4. To help create opportunities to impact our organization and our communities

The content and approach of SCIP

Content
  • Improvement Tool Refreshers (we call it “tool time”)
  • Improvement Concept Discussions
  • Networking Time to Build Relationships
  • I Like, I Wish, I Wonder to Gather Immediate Feedback
Approach
  • Our desire is to provide a feeling of close-knit community, where individuals are not afraid to share differing opinions or “wrong answers

We’ve placed all our full meeting recordings on our YouTube Channel. Below you will find a sampling of our Tool Time Sessions.

2024

Why Improvement Efforts Sometimes Don't Work
How to present a poster at a conference or symposium
The Science of Learning from Failure
Leader Standard Work
Reducing Blood Product Wastage at Stanford Health
Blood Donation Process at Stanford Blood Center

2023

PCORI HSII Capability Building Project Discussion
Integrating AI into QI to improve care delivery
How to utilize AI in Improvement Efforts (Part 2)
How to use AI to help you write a book
Tools to Innovate and Collaborate in a Hybrid Environment
How to utilize AI in Improvement Efforts
Use of a Data Collection Plan
Innovation in a Hybrid World

2022 and earlier

Update on our Community Outreach Efforts with Home Start
How to integrate Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Improvement Work
e-learning and online presentation tips
Creating Spaghetti Diagrams
Introduction to Publishing, Presenting and Posting Improvement work
Introduction to the Community Outreach Pillar of SCIP
How to share your voice by writing an improvement blog
How to Build Improvement Capability
How to use a Project Charter
How to leverage online collaboration tools, like Mural

Check out the recording when Ryan Darke and Jakaria Stewart discussed SCIP at the Stanford Medicine Center for Improvement’s Lecture Series on 10/5/2021.

Ryan Darke
Jakaria Stewart

Alice R. Georgitso, MPH, joins the SMCI Advisory Committee as our first Patient Partner. Alice has served as a Patient Partner with the Stanford Health Care (SHC) Patient & Family Partner Program for over 4 years and was appointed Chairperson of the Adult Congenital Heart Program Patient & Family Advisory Council in January 2020. She assisted in developing the Stanford Adult Congenital Heart Program’s Peer-to-Peer Program and serves as a Mentor to ACHD patients pre-and-post-organ transplantation. Alice has presented Stanford Health Care’s C-I-CARE framework for structuring best practice communications and developing relationship-based care approaches with patients and colleagues to 500+ Stanford Medicine Directors, Managers and Clinical Staff.

Alice is a Patient Relations Manager at Stanford Health Care. Within her role, she provides a channel for problem resolution to promote the highest quality of care and service excellence. Alice has also worked as an Unrelated Donor Search Coordinator with the Blood & Marrow Transplant at Stanford Health Care to coordinate allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplants through collaborative planning and partnership with the National Marrow Donor Program and SHC clinicians. Prior to her work with SHC, she was the Community Service Foundation Director at San Mateo County Medical Association where she partnered with local stakeholders and clinicians to expand county-wide community health programs to diverse populations. She has also delivered invaluable community health services through her work with the American Heart Association.

Alice earned her Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and Biology at Saint Bonaventure University in Olean, NY and her Master of Public Health from SUNY Buffalo in Buffalo, NY. Alice is a member of The Beryl Institute and Adult Congenital Heart Association professional associations, Donor Network West partner advocating for organ, eye, tissue, and blood donation, and remains an active volunteer with SHC. Alice continues to promote patient-and-family-centered care in both hospital and community settings to support precision health and improve the healthcare experience for patients, families, and clinicians.

John Shook learned about lean management while working for Toyota for 11 years in Japan and the U.S., helping it transfer production, engineering, and management systems from Japan to NUMMI and other operations around the world. While at Toyota's headquarters, he became the company's first American kacho (manager) in Japan. In the U.S., Shook joined Toyota’s North American engineering, research and development center in Ann Arbor, Michigan as general manager of administration and planning. His last position with Toyota was as senior American manager with the Toyota Supplier Support Center in Lexington, Kentucky, assisting North American companies adopt the Toyota Production System. Shook co-authored Learning to See, the book that introduced the world to value-stream mapping. He also co-authored Kaizen Express, a bi-lingual manual of the essential concepts and tools of the Toyota Production System. With Managing to Learn, Shook revealed the deeper workings of the A3 management process that is at the heart of Toyota’s management and leadership.
Shook is an industrial anthropologist with a master’s degree from the University of Hawaii, a bachelor’s degree from the University of Tennessee, and is a graduate of the Japan-America Institute of Management Science. At the University of Michigan, he was director of the Japan Technological Management Program and faculty member of the Department of Industrial and Operations Engineering.
Shook is the author of numerous articles, including "How to Change a Culture: Lessons from NUMMI"; Sloan Management Review, January 2010, which won Sloan’s Richard Beckhard Memorial Prize for outstanding article in the field of organizational development.

The Stanford Medicine Center for Improvement benefits from the diversity of its members and the richness of the experiences that they bring. Although the program continues to evolve from when it first launched in October 2019, we continue to reach out to improvers across Stanford Medicine in the School of Medicine, Stanford Health Care, Stanford Children’s Health, Stanford ValleyCare, UHA and PCHA. We welcome everyone from every discipline and recognize that we are stronger together as we value the contributions of every member of our teams.

Dr. Paul Maggio is the Chief Quality Officer of Stanford Health Care. Prior to being appointed the SHC CQO, he was Vice Chair of Surgery for Clinical Affairs, Associate Chief Medical Officer of Operational Effectiveness, and Associate Director of the Adult Intensive Care Unit. He trained in General Surgery at Brown University and obtained advanced training in Adult Surgical Critical Care and Trauma at the University of Michigan. He holds a Masters of Business Administration from the University of Michigan and is triple board certified in General Surgery, Critical Care, and Medical Informatics. In addition to being a clinician and surgeon, Dr. Maggio participates in the National Committee on Healthcare Engineering for the American College of Surgeons, and his research interests are focused on the delivery of high-value care.

Dr. Maggio received the SHC Board of Hospital Director’s Denise O’Leary Award for Clinical Excellence in 2013

Micah Duchesne joined Stanford Medicine in 2020 as a Principal Consultant project managing the deployment and operations of the Hospital Incident Command System (HICS) for COVID-19. He is now the Administrative Director of Performance Improvement at Stanford Health Care where he leads annual operations planning, improvement consulting, and capability development. Micah is also a Fellow at the Stanford Medicine Center for Improvement.

Before joining Stanford, Micah was an independent consultant for his company Silicon Valley Strategy Group, which partnered with Novartis and the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania to commercialize cellular therapies. He led a team of clinicians from Europe, Japan, and Australia in designing a global logistics model and quality management system for Kymriah, the world's first approved CAR-T therapy, and helped create an international advisory board aimed at improving global capacity.

Prior to independent consulting, Micah was the Director of Performance Improvement at Kaiser's Santa Clara Medical Center, and he previously held improvement roles of increasing complexity within other health systems. Micah has both a Bachelor of Science in Accounting and Master of Health Services Administration from Mississippi College. He also holds certifications as a Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt and Project Management Professional.

As a professional, Micah enjoys organizing complex stakeholder ecosystems, clarifying ambiguous goals, aligning visions, and driving high-stakes change. As a human, Micah just enjoys breaking a sweat. While he's not at work, he's at his very own gym in San Jose, CrossFit Moxie. You can find him there coaching olympic weightlifting or working out with his wife. He has a daughter in elementary school and two gym dogs.