VIDEO
Vinod Sahney is recognized internationally for his leadership in applying industrial engineering to health systems. IIE honored his remarkable career this year with the Frank & Lillian Gilbreth Industrial Engineering Award. In his acceptance speech, he tells of how the Gilbreths were the first to champion process improvement work in hospitals and challenges IEs to make modern management practices the standard in healthcare organizations. Sahney, who helped found IIE’s Society for Health Systems, recently retired from BCBS of Massachusetts.
ARTICLES
No one wants to go to the hospital. As if illness or injury isn't enough, we have to deal with one frustrating experience after another. Long wait times, delays, medical errors and other preventable irritants add up to a distrust and distaste for our community hospitals. Results from patient satisfaction surveys conducted within the past five years suggest a slow, but steady decline in public trust and confidence in hospitals. The majority of patient satisfaction initiatives are implemented to "clean up" after a patient and their family have been inconvenienced and irritated.
Sadly, it is within this confusion and chaos that delays, mistakes and miscommunication occur.
abstract Processing time for tests is often considered the most significant measure of performance within a clinical lab. This paper summarizes a project completed by four undergraduate students during a semester-long Workstation Design course. The project setting was a clinical laboratory that was not consistently meeting time requirements for completion of stat test results. The goal, as specified by laboratory management, was to reduce the total turnaround time for stat tests and increase the percentage.