Michael Stoto, Ph.D.,
Professor, Department of Health Systems administration, recently attended the
June 2011 meeting in Seattle, WA, of a Public Health Systems Research Interest
Group meeting at AcademyHealth, and chaired a panel entitled Celebrating 10
years of the PHSR IG. While at the meeting, Dr. Stoto also presented two
posters: Using Critical Event Analysis to Evaluate the Impact of Advances in
Global Surveillance and Notification Systems in the 2009 H1N1 Pandemic? (Michael
Stoto, and Ying Zhang) and Utilizing a Positive Deviance Approach for
Defining H1N1 Vaccine Success (Tamar Klaiman-Jefferson School of Population
Health, and Christopher Nelson-RAND, co-contributors).
Simone Rauscher, Ph.D., Associate Professor in Department of Health
Systems Administration, also attended the June meeting of AcademyHealth in
Seattle, WA, and presented a paper, Financial
Assessment and Investments in the Public Health System. Her paper, Assessing the Quality of Self-Reported Community Benefit Expenditures:
Evidence from Not-for-Profit Hospitals in California, was co-authored with
Mark Vyzas, a graduate student in the Master of Science Program in Health
Systems Administration. Rauscher also
presented a poster entitled Non-Operating
Revenue and Hospital Financial Performance: Can Hospitals Rely on Income From
Non-Patient-Care Activities to Offset Losses on Patient Care?
Four faculty members (Dr. Robert Friedland, Prof. John Gilmore, Dr.
Bernie Horak, and Dr. Jason Ormsby) and six MHSA graduate students (Alexandra
Blake, Elliott Brown, Gabrielle Brown, James Cervantes, Charles Cornell, and
Claire Demarco) received their Green Belt certification in Lean Six Sigma on
July 22, 2011. Others receiving
certificates included members of the administrative and nursing staffs at
Georgetown University Hospital and Shady Grove Adventist Hospital. The eight-week program was sponsored by the
Department of Health Systems Administration at Georgetown University. As part of the training, the participants
were teamed together to lead a Lean Six Sigma project at one of the
hospitals. The project areas were
discharge planning, provider hand-off communications, deep vein thrombosis,
urinary catheter infections, central line blood-stream infections, and patient
throughput. Students will continue in the Fall semester as project managers to
follow-up on their projects. Faculty
will serve as advisers to the current and future Lean Six Sigma teams.
Dr. Bernard Horak, Professor in the Department of Health Systems
Administration and Program Director for the MHSA Program, presented a poster, Student and Resident Initiatives in Quality Improvement (QI) with
Dr. Eileen S. Moore (Assistant Dean for Community Education and Advocacy,
Georgetown University School of Medicine) and Ms. Jamie S. Padmore (Vice
President, Academic Affairs, Medstar Health) at the Association of American
Medical Colleges (AAMC) in Chicago on June 9th. The poster described approaches
that Georgetown and Medstar Health have taken to provide QI training and
experiences to residents and students in the health professions (e.g., health systems
administration, medicine, and nursing), including the QI projects in which
health systems students serve as project managers for Lean Six Sigma teams that
address quality and safety issues at Georgetown University Hospital.