I have two kids, but never got around to actually signing them up for swim lessons. Instead, I taught them to swim myself. I’m a swimmer, but not a swim instructor. I’ve never taught anyone to swim, and I never bothered to learn any formal swim training pedagogy. It was simply opportunistic lessons when we were visiting a hotel or [...]
The perioperative surgical timeout has become standard practice in the OR to reduce avoidable surgical errors by verifying right patient, right procedure, right site. As hospitals evolve to make more key decisions based on data, we’ve implemented an analogous “data timeout” process to make sure we are using the right data, right policy, and right process. This approach builds trust [...]
People who make healthcare their career fall somewhere in the spectrum between “systems thinkers” and “clinical thinkers”. If you’ve ever wondered where you are, try this simple take-home personality test, based on your reaction to this hypothetical statement: 2017 was the first year ever with zero commercial jet passenger deaths. Most people see that as a huge accomplishment, but I [...]
When I’m not working towards making hospitals more efficient, I like to swim. On a good day, I can do 500 yards in a hair under 7’30”. This makes me much faster than most people swimming laps in a community pool, but very average for a competitive master’s program. And when it comes to each swimmer completing their own workout [...]
Everyone knows that efficiently running an operating room requires accurate metrics that show how surgeons are using their allocated block time. But just as important – and often overlooked – is understanding what surgeons are doing outside their block time, as well as understanding who is “flying under the radar” by squatting blocks they are not entitled to use. Much [...]
As we head into winter here in Boston, a favorite topic of school-age kids is soothsaying when and whether school will be closed for snow. As soon as news breaks of an approaching winter storm, instagram switches from the Kardashians and Oscar snubs to weather maps and polar vortexes in an attempt to figure out if school is open or [...]
Traditional methods for managing the OR often lead to unnecessary conflict between surgeons, nursing, and administration, and poor data analytics is usually a root cause or very close. In the absence of reliable metrics that are verifiable and actionable, staff resort to previous experience, instincts and politics to make decisions. We meet clients with the assumption that all players in [...]
Data scientists and medical clinicians look at things from different perspectives especially with respect to data. Data scientists focus on what is most common, while clinicians tend to concentrate on what is unique. In the real world of healthcare and hospital operations, this means data scientists will typically optimize for the most common type of patient, while clinicians instinctively optimize [...]
For the past eight years, my family and I have been hosts for Hospitality Homes, a Boston-based organization that connects local volunteers who have a spare bedroom with out-of-town families of patients in Boston for medical treatment. We’ve had guests from all over the word, and they stay for as little as one night and as long as four months. [...]
We had a snowstom in the Northeast last week but as far as I’m concerned, the real storm is the one over parking that immediately follows the one with the snow. Few local customs generate as much controversy as the tradition of “space savers.” These are objects such as broken lawn chairs or traffic cones people use to “reserve” their [...]