Mayo Clinic Consulting Edge

Expanded Contact (COVID) Tracing

*This podcast was recorded before Management Engineering and Consulting and Planning Services integrated into the new Mayo Clinic Strategy Department

 

Medical experts consider expanded contact tracing a critical component of dealing with the Corona Virus. As we continue to battle Covid-19 worldwide, Mayo Clinic has been able to quickly develop advanced tools for contact tracing. In today's episode, Megan Rensing, Health Systems Engineer, and host Eva Fjerstad discuss a project resulting in an advanced contact tracing system in use at Mayo Clinic.

Turning on a Dime: The Story of the COVID-19 Nurse Line

*This podcast was recorded before Management Engineering and Consulting and Planning Services integrated into the new Mayo Clinic Strategy Department.

 

As the COVID-19 Pandemic entered the U.S. and the nation's fears began to surge, Mayo Clinic nurses were asked by the Hospital Incident Command Center to stand up a nurse line specifically for COVID. The COVID Nurse Line went live on March 11th, 2020 with a unit of about 40 nurses but quickly expanded to about 100.The initial intent of the COVID Nurse Line was to screen callers across the Mayo Clinic enterprise, including the Midwest, Arizona and Florida to determine if the caller met the criteria to be tested for COVID-19. If they were to screen positive for testing, the staff on the COVID Nurse Line would then place the order request and provide patient education related to quarantine and exposure recommendations, symptom management and urgent symptom assessment with appropriate recommendations for care. It quickly morphed into a help line for anyone across the United States with questions regarding COVID-19 testing, care, travel, vaccinations, etc. Management Engineering and Consulting was requested in January 2021 to help evaluate the processes and workflows developed to help assist with increasing demand. Listen as Allyssa Stevens, Health Systems Engineer Associate, Jean Johnston, Nurse Manager, Tina Oian, Lead Charge Nurse for the COVID Nurse Line and host Tony Chihak as they discuss the trials and success of lifting a designated nurse line off the ground to provide excellent care and support to patients across the enterprise.

Medical Improv Pt. 2

In part two of our Medical Improv series, Senior Principal Health System Engineers Gene Dankbar and Kathy Zavaleta, along with host Tony Chihak reflect on improving communication skills, even in remote work settings. They teamed up with some of their colleagues from the Strategy Department.  With a few simple exercises borrowed from improvisational theatre the fun illustrates key lessons about thinking on your feet.

Medical Improv

The importance of listening and communication is key for health system engineers and project managers as they work closely with senior leaders, project proponents, project team members and subject matter experts. Rather remarkably, tools used commonly by improvisation actors can help all healthcare professionals sharpen and enhance their communication skills. Join two of Management Engineering and Consulting’s Senior Principal Health System Engineers Kathy Zavaleta and Gene Dankbar, along with host, Tony Chihak, as they describe how they have applied improvisation methods, referred to as ‘medical improvisation’ in a healthcare setting, in their day-to-day work to enhance project outcomes. 

Advanced Care at Home

Mayo Clinic has developed an advanced care at home program. This model of care provides comprehensive treatment and recovery service to patients in their own home, and will allow patients who are “sick, but stable” to have the option of recovering where they are most comfortable: At home. Aligned with Mayo Clinic’s 2030 strategy, advanced care at home is expected to transform the delivery of care by revolutionizing the location and logistics of acute care delivery for patients with serious or complex illnesses for both Mayo and the health care system overall.

In this episode, our speakers Prerna Dean and Joel Roberts, Senior Health Systems Engineers, Arnold Blauert, Senior Project Manager along with our host Jodi Grimm talk about how Mayo Clinic providers will leverage cutting edge technology platform and an ecosystem of support services to care for patients in a home environment.

Transforming Complex Multispecialty Practice through Systems Engineering

Children with complex congenital or acquired conditions affecting breathing, swallowing, and growth often required multispecialist care that is costly and complex, characterized by multiple procedures, heavy reliance on technology and frequent hospitalizations. Today, these kids often start their care journey in the Aerodigestive Clinic but up till 2018 there was lack of a national consensus definition of an aerodigestive patient. Many healthcare institutions also lacked standardized structure or functions of an aerodigestive program prior to that point. This is a story of how a determined group of clinicians partnered with their health systems engineer 8 years ago to completely transform the practice model for evaluation of children with aerodigestive issues. Using systems engineering principles, the team created a patient-centered multispecialty practice that reduced turn-around-time for diagnostic evaluation from a median of 150 days to 6 days. 

Mayo Clinic Outpatient Practice Modeling

Mathematical optimization is a set of methods for identifying the best solution to a problem given real-world constraints. Such methods have been applied to a wide range of industries and business problems including capacity management, facility location, portfolio allocation, product recommendations, logistics, and scheduling among many others. Paired with emerging technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence, optimization has immense potential to transform operational decision making in healthcare at scale.

Learn how mathematical optimization was used to address resource utilization and scheduling constraints in a multi-disciplinary clinical practice at Mayo Clinic in a post-COVID-19 environment. Our speakers include Senior Health Systems Engineers, Amrika Ramjewan, M.S. and Tarin Casadonte, M.S., as well as our host Tony Chihak.

COVID-19 Visitor Screening

To ensure the safety of patients and staff during the COVID-19 pandemic, Mayo Clinic rapidly developed methods for screening symptomatic patients entering the clinic and testing asymptomatic patients prior to their surgeries and procedures.  In today’s episode, Senior Health Systems Engineer Steven Crowley describes how the new COVID-19 Advanced Screening Clinic was quickly created and operationalized to safely provide virtual care options for patients who fail entrance screening and to efficiently test asymptomatic patients for COVID-19.