A team led by Dr. Justin Honce, Nancy Pritchard, Julia Drose, and Nancy Cheung set out to reduce the inpatient MRI turn-around-time (TAT) from order entry to 1st image acquisition. Pre-intervention TAT was 751 minutes. Through multiple PDSA cycles including redesign of the MRI scheduling and role clarity around which team members would transport the patient and do the MRI screening forms the team was able to reduce the TAT to 401 minutes. Review of the process a year later found most of this gain was sustained.

IHQSE leader Dr. Tyler Anstett and colleagues report on how a systems-based M&M conference with key stakeholders present resulted in significant improvements in completion time of ‘routine’ (18-minute reduction) and ‘now’ (8-minute reduction) ordered inpatient electrocardiograms. This is the first study to show a positive impact on a process following a systems-based case review conference.

As part of the Leadership & Professional Development series in the Journal of Hospital Medicine, IHQSE faculty member Emily Gottenborg, MD, and her colleague, Manuel Diaz, MD, share insights on building a personal leadership brand. They emphasize reflecting on your strengths, values, goals, and organizational priorities. Sharing your brand and personal vision statement will help others understand what you bring to the team and will help you maximize your strengths.

Working with a team of clinicians and informaticists, IHQSE Director Dr. Jeff Glasheen helped create and implement an EHR-driven tool that accurately predicts inpatient mortality. The tool, using real-time data from Epic, provides a highly predictive mortality score that is updated every 15 minutes across a 12-hospital health system. Tested on over 80,000 patients, the tool was developed to aid decision making in scarce resource situations, such as COVID-19 ventilator shortages.