Marc Harrison, M.D.,  CEO of  Salt Lake City-based Intermountain Healthcare, based in Salt Lake City,  writes in the Harvard Business Review about his system’s intense use of “15-minute huddles” to maximize care and efficiency.

“At Intermountain, the 15-minute huddle is the key. It enables knowledge from activities throughout the organization in the previous 24 hours to escalate up to executive leadership — Tier VI in our model — and be addressed.

“Using that 15 minutes effectively requires structure: Each huddle has a leader; the participants are designated, as is the recorder of the data; the huddle is scheduled; and the categories of reported information are captured on a prepared chart. We have four fundamentals of extraordinary care that are covered in our daily huddles: safety, quality, access, and stewardship of resources so they are used to provide the best possible care. Across those fundamentals, eight key topics are reported every day. They include potential serious safety events that could have harmed a patient, caregiver injuries, and reported downtimes (of equipment, elevators, systems or processes, for example).”

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