Robert Huckman's Profile

For a bit more background on health care APIs, you can check out this brief piece from HBR: https://hbr.org/2015/12/the-untapped-potential-of-health-care-apis

This is a very current and universal issue. Have you considered the ongoing discussion related to the development of application programming interfaces (APIs)? One Boston-based group, called SMART Health IT (https://smarthealthit.org/) might be of interest. They grew out of Boston Children’s Hospital and are deeply engaged in creating a platform for the development and integration of health related apps. This is somewhat different than the issue of integrating legacy systems but may, over the long run, serve as an alternative approach.

This is certainly a challenge. I don’t know how practical or feasible this might be in your situation, but is it possible to create an approach where members of one team will occasionally have the opportunity to observe other teams? This would allow for the possibility that the observer might have suggestions from similar situations faced by his/her own team. Alternatively, the observer might obtain ideas from observing the other team that would be useful if applied to his/her home team. This could obviously get burdensome if these observations occur too frequently but, if done occasionally in a manner that pairs together teams that might be expected to learn from each others’ experiences, it could be helpful.

This is a very interesting and timely issue. Minimum volume “pledges” have become a topic of substantial discussion in many surgical specialties. See for example this article from NEJM on one such effort: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1508472?af=R&rss=currentIssue

One question is whether the 250 procedures/surgeon threshold you mention is simply appying the Martini Klinik standard or has it been shown to be the optimal minimum volume in other studies. It strikes me as a bit higher than recommended minimum volumes in other procedures, but this may represent a particular characteristic of prostate procedures.

This is an incredibly universal challenge in health care delivery. I think the point in jsjr’s comment about focusing on a win that ALL would agree is a win (e.g., avoiding a near miss is unquestionably good; saving a few dollars may not necessarily be seen to be as good by all parties). Outside of health care, companies like Alcoa (focus on patient safety) have used efforts to improve non-financial performance as a driver of subsequent improvements in productivity and (in turn) financial performance. Within health care, there are examples of systems that celebrate “positive deviance”; this might have some relevance to celebrating the quick wins that jsjr mentions.

This is a very interesting challenge and one one which I imagine some of our participants from large clinic models might be able to offer some insight. We will also be discussing Mayo Clinic in the third module. Mayo has tried to pair clinical leaders with administrative counterparts to try to push initiatives forward. Do any participants have experience with similar models?

Thanks for sharing this post as our inaugural blogger! I am interested to hear what other MHCD participants who have actually initiated similar efforts in their organization have experienced on the issue of self-service kiosks. The experience of the airline industry–where such kiosks have become common place, even for complex travel transactions (which are still admittedly less complex than many medical transactions)–may also provide some interesting experience from another customer-service setting. Finally, you might want to take a look at the following academic paper on self service, co-authored by no other than our own Professors Buell, Campbell and Frei: http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=40014. It is written for an academic audience, but the insights may be worth considering.