Knowledge on the Go
Health, Fitness & Longevity
About
The Vizient PI Collaboratives team hosts podcasts throughout the year on issues related to leading and managing systems, engaging your workforce and optimizing care delivery.
Episodes
- Medication Reconciliation
Medication reconciliation plays a critical role in patient safety by ensuring medications are accurate, appropriate, and understood during transitions of care. Vizient host Shannon Hale speaks with Ekaterina Kossykh-Burrows, Clinical Pharm…
- PSI Indicators
Patient safety indicators are more than numbers on a report. They expose where harm may be happening and where systems are breaking down. Katelyn Dietz, Director of Patient Safety and Quality at Lake Charles Memorial, shares how her team t…
- Ambulatory Patient Access
Access to care in an ambulatory setting continues to challenge health systems as patient expectations grow, pushing organizations to rethink how patients connect with care. Our host Michelle Lewis joins Tyler Bauer, Senior Vice President o…
- Patient Transfers
Patient transfers are a common part of hospital care, but they carry real risk, making strong communication and coordination essential for safe outcomes. Sharon Johnson, Executive Director of Throughput and Capacity at Community Health Net…
- Mortality Outcomes
Mortality affects hospitals all over the country and having structured systems in place helps improve outcomes. Tiffany Harvey, Quality Assurance Reviewer at INTEGRIS Health, joins host Shannon Hale, Senior PI Program Director at Vizient,…
- Sepsis Awareness
Sepsis affects millions of people each year and remains one of the most complex and deadly medical emergencies facing healthcare today. Michelle Lewis, Senior Director of PI Programs at Vizient, is joined by Shannon Hale, Senior PI Program…
- Care Between Visits
Healthcare providers are receiving patient portal messages at large volumes, reshaping how care teams deliver and manage care between visits. As patient messaging grows from simple prescription questions to complex clinical concerns, this…
- Automated patient messaging
Patient messaging has become more common across health systems, but few use it in a way that truly supports better health outcomes. Northwestern Medicine’s Smart Outreach for Better Health is taking patient communication a step further by…
- Pharmacy medication histories
Pharmacy driven medication history programs are essential for accurate transitions of care and patient safety, especially in rural and resource-limited settings. Jenny Slavens, from IU Health Arnett shares how her team built a 24/7 regiona…
- Savings through preference card management
Preference card management plays a critical role in improving accuracy, reducing costs, and driving efficiency across surgical services. Host LaTammy Marks, Senior Performance Improvement Program Director at Vizient, sits down with Carol Z…
- System quality structures
Quality and clinical outcomes improve when healthcare systems are built on strong and cohesive quality structures. Dr. Matthew McCambridge, Chief Quality Officer at Lehigh Valley Health Network, joins host Amber Hanser to explore findings…
- AI in healthcare
AI is advancing rapidly in the healthcare space, raising important questions about how it will be used responsibly and effectively. Host Courtney Furrow White is joined by Sarah Pollet and Julia Bongiorno from UCSF to explore the evolving…
- Mortality
Mortality is often viewed as a key indicator of the quality of care in a healthcare organization, and something that most organizations are working to improve upon. Through Vizient's work with national organizations all working to improve…
- The power of value analysis
Value analysis empowers health systems to make strategic, evidence-based decisions to optimize patient outcomes and reduce costs. Host LaTammy Marks and guest Nicole Schmidt talk about the power of value analysis in healthcare. Nicole shar…
- Mobility is medicine
Patient immobility can lead to serious complications such as muscle loss, blood clots, depression and loss of independence. However, without proper training and support, many healthcare workers feel it is unsafe to mobilize patients. Host…
- Systemness
Hospital mergers and acquisitions can be both transformative and complex, requiring careful alignment and integration of systems. In this episode, host Thomas Sauls speaks with Ed Moore, President of UMass Memorial Harrington Hospital, and…
- Workplace violence in the ambulatory setting
Workplace violence in ambulatory care settings presents unique challenges due to open access, isolated locations and limited security resources. Jennifer Rodgers, Chief Nursing Officer at UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital, speaks to…
- Establishing a structured sepsis performance improvement team
In this episode Dr. Lauren Williams, Patient Safety Manager at AHN Wexford Hospital, shares valuable insights from her hospital's efforts to improve sepsis care. Speaking with host Shannon Hale, Lauren highlights the critical need for enha…
- Environmental Sustainability: A journey worth taking (UW Medicine’s story)
More than 200 medical journals identified climate change as the greatest global threat. In this podcast, UW Medicine describes how focusing on environmental sustainability improved their vendor selections, supply chain flow, patient care a…
- Nurse delegation
Hospitals are in the business of improving care and want to keep patients safe and have a satisfied workforce. More creative staffing models are emerging, and hospitals are focusing on more advanced training of non-licensed nursing personn…
- Building Success for the Community Health Worker
Chronic illnesses present a significant challenge to our healthcare system, straining resources and impacting patient quality of life. One innovative approach to tackling this issue is the community health worker model, a strategy that emp…
- Pharmacy Revenue Cycle
The pharmacy revenue cycle is a multi-phase continuous process, which requires ongoing collaboration across many disciplines. The process starts at pre-registration and continues through payment reconciliation. Steven Loborec, associate di…
- High Reliability: the nuts and bolts
Healthcare organizations across the nation strive to become highly reliable organizations. Vizient defines an high reliability organization as an organization that has experienced significant success in avoiding harm within an environment…
- School Transitions Following Psychiatric Hospitalization
Imagine the stress of returning to school, following a psychiatric hospitalization for the pediatric patient, their family and caregivers. Dr. Sarah Edwards, director for the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Courtney Vaughn,…
- Using AI to improve observed mortality
Artificial Intelligence has been helping improve healthcare for years, but just recently, there has been a seismic shift in capability, buy-in and attention. Healthcare systems across the country are looking into safely and effectively usi…
- Hospital-acquired infection improvement journey
Hospital-acquired infections affect every health organization. These infections may be caused by a variety of pathogens including bacterial, viruses, fungi and parasites. They can lead to increased morbidity, mortality and healthcare costs…
- Improving sepsis bundle compliance
Sepsis has long been a challenge for healthcare organizations. It is a leading cause of morbidity, readmissions and mortality. As a reaction to an infection, sepsis can spread quickly, progress to septic shock and eventually shut down orga…
- Patient-initiated Portal Communications
Navigating patient-initiated portal communication to create better experiences for patients is a national priority for healthcare systems. The goal of the patient-initiated portal communication project collaboration between Vizient and the…
- Social Determinants of Health (SDoH) to decrease LOS and improve capacity
We know that social determinants of health such as housing instability, food insecurity, transportation barriers and limited access to education significantly influence individuals’ health outcomes. By screening for these factors, healthca…
- Readmissions
Reducing preventable hospital readmissions is a national priority for payers, providers, and policy makers seeking to improve health care and lower costs. More important than costs, are the goals of providing quality care to patients who p…
- Building relationships: referral and marketing strategy for remote patient monitoring
Remote patient monitoring, commonly referred to as RPM, is a type of telehealth in which healthcare providers monitor patients outside the traditional care setting using digital medical devices. The data collected from these devices are th…
- Zero Restraint Use in Pediatric Psychiatry
Restraints can have a negative emotional impact on pediatric patients. Being physically restrained can be traumatic and lead to feelings of helplessness, anxiety and loss of control. Having to put pediatric patients in restraints takes a t…
- Updates for Antimicrobial Stewardship Standards
Antimicrobial resistance continues to be a public health threat across the globe. Recent updates to the Joint omission standards provide an opportunity to evaluate our current programs for improvements. Today’s program looks at what two he…
- Mortality
Mortality is often viewed as a key indicator of the quality of care in a healthcare organization, and something that most organizations are working to improve upon. Through Vizient's work with national organizations all working to improve…
- Task Rebalancing to Improve Discharge Efficiency
Transitions from hospital to post-acute care is both time consuming and complex. When discharge tasks are not coordinated and stacked on the patient’s last day, any disruption can cause a cascade of negative events. In fact, 30% of all hos…
- How a Nurse Residency Program supports Performance Improvement and Retention
Similar to residency programs physicians and other healthcare disciplines undergo, these programs give recently graduated nurses the support and learning opportunities to smooth the transition from novice to competent clinicians, while pro…
- Caring for patients where they are: Examining a successful home infusion program
Care is moving outside the hospital at a faster and faster pace. Due to payer mandates, shifts in sites of care to locations outside the hospital will bring an additional 18 percent expansion of patient visits to physician offices and outp…
- Sepsis Month: Racing to reduce readmissions
Recent studies have demonstrated that sepsis patients have a much higher readmission risk than other common conditions such as heart failure, heart attacks, and pneumonia. The National Institutes of Health states that sepsis is a substanti…
- Change Management
Change management is a term bandied about a lot in industry as a whole and in the health care industry in particular. Yet, organizations struggle in carrying it out and few seem to see lasting results from their efforts. In this episode, t…
- Go Green: Why Your Healthcare System Should be Engaged in Environmental Sustainability
Many issues facing our healthcare systems, such as rising costs, staffing shortages, supply chain disruptions, why should sustainability be top of mind for healthcare organizations and what they how can they improve their sustainability jo…
- Revisiting Workplace Violence series from 2022 - Part3
We have a Workplace Violence Survey underway now. The survey consists of 9 questions related to 4 outcome metrics. The deadline to submit data is August 18, 2023. If interested, please contact picollaborativesteam@vizientinc.com Closing ou…
- Revisiting Workplace Violence series from 2022 - Part 2
We have a Workplace Violence Survey underway now. The survey consists of 9 questions related to 4 outcome metrics. The deadline to submit data is August 18, 2023. If interested, please contact picollaborativesteam@vizientinc.com Continuing…
- Revisiting Workplace Violence series from 2022 - Part 1
We have a Workplace Violence Survey underway now. The survey consists of 9 questions related to 4 outcome metrics. The deadline to submit data is August 18, 2023. If interested, please contact picollaborativesteam@vizientinc.com In recogni…
- First Things First: Advance Care Planning for Inpatients with Cancer
More and more, healthcare organizations are focusing on Advance Care Planning as a best practice for treating patients with multiple chronic conditions. This approach can be particularly beneficial in working with patients who have exhaust…
- Patient mobility and safe patient handling
Most hospital patients spend over 80 percent of their stay in the bed. Immobility contributes to higher lengths of stay, increases in falls, pressure injuries and new nursing home placements. All of this reduces overall quality of care and…
- Effective strategies for sustaining and optimizing telehealth
Telehealth found wide adoption and acceptance during the pandemic, accompanied with loosened government restrictions on its use. On this episode, two experts examine the current state of telehealth, bolstered by findings from the project E…
- AI-assisted detection of heart murmurs
Since its development over 50 years ago, the stethoscope hasn’t changed much – until now. Enter artificial intelligence (AI). On this episode, we discuss how AI, working with robust datasets, promises to enhance the newest generation of st…
- Elevating the Workforce: Reimagining Models of Care
In the wake of COVID, the nation’s health care organizations are experiencing staffing shortages, burnout and other workforce challenges. Health leaders are turning to innovation, technology and alternative staffing models to address these…
- Sprinting to Decrease LOS
Patient length of stay (LOS) is a crucial measurement for health care organizations since longer patient stays increase patient risk for complications while reducing patient satisfaction. They also represent higher costs for the hospital.…
- Digital Technologies for Pediatric Mental Health
The mental health of our children is important to our society. Unfortunately, the state of mental wellness for our nation’s children and adolescents is declining. Twenty percent were diagnosed with a mental disorder before COVID-19, and on…