Jenny Sabol - Administrative Resident at UPMC

I'm about to start my 11th week working as an administrative resident in the Department of Women's Health, and here are some of my main projects:

• Patient Flow Improvement: The Ultrasound department at Magee has had issues with extraordinarily long patient wait times and organizational problems for almost 20 years.  They decided to call in the Center for Quality to find the source of and minimize the problem, so I have been working with a Process Improvement Specialist from the Center.  We started the project in June with "deep dive" sessions with all of the Ultrasound Technicians, where they were able to voice any issues with the department without any management present.  This allowed us to begin digging deep into the source of the problem.  From here we split up all the issues into categories and are forming work groups so that we can tackle each category one-by-one.  I have also spent much time observing, from the waiting room to the front desk to the tech triage area to spending days with individual techs inside the exam rooms.  I will be continuing with observations and organizing my data to find bottlenecks and areas for improvement.
• Workflow Redesign:  At Magee, physicians still handwrite their notes whenever they do rounding.  I have been working with the Chief Medical Information Officer to redesign the process so that they will start using powernotes to document electronically.  I have observed several departments to understand their rounding processes and how we can best make customized changes.  The powernotes for Post Partum are ready, so I am developing a training session to instruct the physicians on the best use of the powernotes.  We are also in the process of acquiring tablets so that the physicians can take notes right in the room.  Additionally, one of my tasks is to implement team rounding (versus the currently used individual rounding) in order to take notes in the most time efficient way.
• Physician Incentives:  I developed spreadsheets so that whenever physicians' total wRVUs (work relative value units) come in each month, estimates can be made for the fiscal year's total incentives.  The last fiscal year ended June 30th, so I am currently calculating each physician's incentive total and developing a database to generate these reports.