Reducing Cost to Patients With the Use of Tracheostomy Durable Medical Equipment – Kristi Norris

The Problem:
Our team identified many causes of this problem. We focused on the fact that HMEs were not commonly utilized and creating standard practice. They’re summarized below in our fishbone diagram.

Finding a Solution:
The team consolidated these above causes into four main key drivers.

Product must be available within SHC Central Supply and Home Agencies formulary with HME.
This first key driver proved to be critical because our team discovered that we didn’t carry the product. We then had to connect with supply chain to figure out how to get the product in stock regularly.

Multidisciplinary engagement with product change (including APP’s, Nursing, Physicians, Speech and Respiratory Therapy).
We recognized that making a change like this takes a village. There are many different stakeholders in this process, so including all of them in developing a process and making the product change would be critical. Our team created educational materials with the help of these stakeholders, including a One Point Lesson (OPL).

HME training for ENT service staff, patients, and families.
As mentioned in the multidisciplinary engagement key driver, our team had to develop educational materials. The training on these materials was also critical. The training had to be something that was easily accessible, regularly updated and reviewed with the appropriate parties.

A second part of this training would be how patients and families are educated in the use of the device. We realized one big gap was that there wasn’t any patient-facing training on this topic. While we further develop this material and create an order set, we decided to verbally train patients and families. We have been in contact with the team at ATOS to work with them in the development of educational materials for patients and their families.

In developing the use of HME’s and documenting the process, we recognized that we would need to do several PDSA cycles for implementation. Once we received the product and figured patients required further secretion management, we revised our education to include the needs of these patients.

Post discharge planning with CM, Home Health and Skilled Nursing.
One final big bucket was the post discharge planning process with Case Management. We also had to include these stakeholders to ensure that they could educate frequently used home health agencies on the use and ordering of HME devices. Case Management was represented on our team, so we had them utilize our initial OPL to develop their own material. This encouraged them to have conversations about trach care earlier in their process.

The outlook:
As our team began training people and developing our processes, the utilization of HMEs started to get people excited! It was satisfying to see other units get engaged and want to utilize the product as well. Based on the positive response and the good clinical outcomes, we plan to expand further to other units. We will also need to continue to work with Supply Chain to create ready supply in the hospital.

Reflection:
Our team stumbled a few times throughout our project. The first sticking point was including all the key stakeholders in the change. When it comes to change, people have strong feelings. We found it critical to make sure all stakeholders felt comfortable. Respiratory Therapy and Speech found out about our planned change after discussing with Nursing and Physician teams. Initially Respiratory and Speech had reservations, but after showing them the product and educating them they understood the benefits and were eager to utilize it.

One other learning point was understanding the external processes that our team would impact or be impacted by. For example, navigating how to get HMEs in stock was something we had never done before. We discovered that getting product in house takes time and wish we had started sooner.

Team Members (shown here): Carol Bertelsen, Maribeth Cambridge, Christa Groen, Ann Kearney, Kristi Norris, Staci Peavler, Idris Samad

Team Sponsors: Dr. Damrose and Dr. Sharon Hampton

Kristi Norris

Kristi Norris

Kristi has worked at Stanford Health Care for 18 years. She started as a new graduate nurse with her ADN, went back to school (twice), transitioned to management, and recently joined the team at the CEPD. She has many valued experiences on various process improvement teams in her tenure. She has really appreciated her CELT experience and is proud the work her team has accomplished.

Extended References

Stanford School of Medicine
Stanford Healthcare
Stanford Children’s Hospital

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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.