Business Process Redesign in the Perioperative Process: A Case Perspective for Digital Transformation

This case study investigates business process redesign within the perioperative process as a method to achieve digital transformation. Specific perioperative sub-processes are targeted for re-design and digitalization, which yield improvement. Based on a 184-month longitudinal study of a large 1,157 registered-bed academic medical center, the observed effects are viewed through a lens of information technology (IT) impact on core capabilities and core strategy to yield a digital transformation framework that supports patient-centric improvement across perioperative sub-processes. This research identifies existing limitations, potential capabilities, and subsequent contextual understanding to minimize perioperative process complexity, target opportunity for improvement, and ultimately yield improved capabilities. Dynamic technological activities of analysis, evaluation, and synthesis applied to specific perioperative patient-centric data collected within integrated hospital information systems yield the organizational resource for process management and control. Conclusions include theoretical and practical implications as well as study limitations

Florida Historical Society Essay Contest for High School Students

First Prize to Sandra Lewis, Dan McCarty High School, White City: History of White City, Florid

Enhancing the Wellbeing of Incarcerated Females: A Pilot Study

Piloting the Group Positive Psychotherapy program (Seligman, Rashid & Parks, 2006) with dually diagnosed mothers age 13 to 22, who are under penal supervision; this project will attempt to counter traditional interventions by increasing positive emotion, meaning and engagement. Phase 1: The program will be administered over 7 a week period to 20 professional staff members. Measures on approaches to happiness and quality of life will be taken pre and post intervention. Phase 2: The program will be administered over a 6 week period to a group of 24 residential clients. Measures on depression and quality of life will be taken pre and post intervention

Lipid-lowering therapy: who can benefit?

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death in the US. Despite the decline in CVD-associated mortality rates in recent years, coronary heart disease (CHD) still causes one in every six deaths in this country. Because most CHD risk factors are modifiable (eg, smoking, hypertension, obesity, onset of type 2 diabetes, and dyslipidemia), cardiovascular risk can be reduced by timely and appropriate interventions, such as smoking cessation, diet and lifestyle changes, and lipid-modifying therapy. Dyslipidemia, manifested by elevated low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), is central to the development and progression of atherosclerosis, which can be silent for decades before triggering a first major cardiovascular event. Consequently, dyslipidemia has become a primary target of intervention in strategies for the prevention of cardiovascular events. The guidelines of the Adult Treatment Panel (ATP) III, updated in 2004, recommend therapeutic lifestyle changes and the use of lipid-lowering medications, such as statins, to achieve specific LDL-C goals based on a person’s global cardiovascular risk. For high-risk individuals, such as patients with CHD and diabetic patients without CHD, an LDL-C target of < 100 mg/dL is recommended, and statin therapy should be considered to help patients achieve this goal. If correctly dosed in appropriate patients, currently approved statins are generally safe and provide significant cardiovascular benefits in diverse populations, including women, the elderly, and patients with diabetes. A recent primary prevention trial also showed that statins benefit individuals traditionally not considered at high risk of CHD, such as those with no hyperlipidemia but elevated C-reactive protein. Additional evidence suggests that statins may halt or slow atherosclerotic disease progression. Recent evidence confirms the pivotal role of statins in primary and secondary prevention

Social fairness and ecological integrity: strategy and action for a moral economy

Journal ArticleOn March 4th, 2011, 44 participants gathered at the Quaker Center at Ben Lomond, California, for a weekend workshop, ?Social Fairness and Ecological Integrity: Strategy and Action for a Moral Economy.? This workshop was organized to launch the second phase of the Moral Economy Project of Quaker Institute for the Future. The first phase produced the book Right Relationship: Building a Whole Earth Economy. The workshop was co-sponsored by the Ecoberries affinity group of Strawberry Creek Monthly Meeting (Berkeley CA). George Lakey served as facilitator with Keith Helmuth, Phil Emmi, and Sandra Lewis as resource people and Shelley Tanenbaum as workshop coordinator. Advance materials sent to the registered participants?three background papers by Sandra Lewis, Phil Emmi, and Keith Helmuth?are included in this expanded version of this QEB

Lunar preform manufacturing

A design for a machine to produce hollow, continuous fiber reinforced composite rods of lunar glass and a liquid crystalline matrix using the pultrusion process is presented. The glass fiber will be produced from the lunar surface, with the machine and matrix being transported to the moon. The process is adaptable to the low gravity and near-vacuum environment of the moon through the use of a thermoplastic matrix in fiber form as it enters the pultrusion process. With a power consumption of 5k W, the proposed machine will run continuously, unmanned in fourteen day cycles, matching the length of moon days. A number of dies could be included that would allow the machine to produce rods of varying diameter, I-beams, angles, and other structural members. These members could then be used for construction on the lunar surface or transported for use in orbit. The benefits of this proposal are in the savings in weight of the cargo each lunar mission would carry. The supply of glass on the moon is effectively endless, so enough rods would have to be produced to justify its transportation, operation, and capital cost. This should not be difficult as weight on lunar mission is at a premium

Perioperative Patient Transparency and Accountability via Integrated Hospital Information Systems

The push for value-driven healthcare has resulted in numerous calls for increased transparency and accountability across thehealthcare industry. This paper provides an a priori perspective to perioperative process transparency and accountabilitywithin a hospital environment by describing, examining, and discussing case-study research across a hospital’s perioperativeand auxiliary services. Based on a 66-month longitudinal study of a large 909 registered-bed teaching hospital, this paperinvestigates how the complexity of technological change dynamics, integrated information systems, and a patient-centricperspective contribute toward opportunities for patient transparency and accountability within a hospital’s perioperativeprocesses. This paper also provides theoretical and practical implications, as well as study limitations

Improving Perioperative Data Integrity and Quality via Electronic Medical Record Reconciliation

This case study investigates data integrity and quality within the perioperative process via embedded quality control check (QCC) rules, used within a business process management framework to support patient care documentation, performance reporting, patient billing, data analysis, and regulatory agency audits. The study identifies specific perioperative nursing care documentation as electronic medical records and demonstrates how QCC rules, an embedded QCC process, and QCC rule violation reconciliation is applicable to ensuring data integrity and quality within integrated hospital information systems. Based on a 166-month longitudinal study of a large 1,157 registered-bed academic medical center, this study provides a priori business process management examples of data integrity and quality within the perioperative process. Recognizing existing limitations, potential capabilities, and the subsequent contextual understanding are contributing factors that yield measured improvement. Theoretical and practical implications and/or limitations of this study’s results are also discussed

Mining Perioperative Data for Business Process Analysis and Redesign: A Case Study Perspective

This study examines data mining as an extension of system design to support continuous process improvement. This paper identifies how dynamic technological activities of synthesis, analysis, and evaluation can highlight complex relationships within integrated information systems through existing patterns of associated organizational data. The identification of data patterns and subsequent human contextual understanding are contributing factors that yield business process redesign opportunity and re-enforce continuous process improvement within the perioperative services of a hospital. Based on a 72- month longitudinal study of a large 909 registered-bed teaching hospital, this case study investigates the operationalization of data mining in business process redesign as a method to identify, qualify, understand, and capture benefits from continuous process improvement. The theoretical and practical implications and/or limitations of this study’s results are also discussed with respect to practitioners and researchers alike