URI_Research_Magazine_Momentum_Spring_2015_Melissa-McCarthy

Providence VA Hospital New Medical Supply System

latest in systems research Applied to the Providence VA Hospital

by Chris Barrett

and restocking easier. In addition, by color-coding supplies by medial incident, nurses no longer need to waste time rooting around to gather all the supplies needed to treat, for example, a heart attack. Meanwhile another project led by two doctoral students led many of the hospital’s 1,100 staff in workshops teaching them how to apply lean manufacturing techniques to hospital operations. “Sometimes you encounter people who resist getting involved and see it as extra work,” Maier-Speredelozzi says. “We’re showing them that the work can make their primary job of caring for patients more effective and even more enjoyable.” The latest project includes URI industrial and systems engineering doctoral student Ahmed Alhasani. He wants to help the VA staff reduce the number of infections that occur in patients treated by the hospital. To do so, he’s studying new ways to collect, tabulate and report data on infection disease prevention measures. The hospital takes infection control so seriously that it studies minute details down to how often workers wash their hands. Now Alhasani wants to make that data easier for infection

Rhode Island, the VA staff members gain an outside eye with time to dig into issues. “What the relationship has brought us is new approaches, new insights and new ways of doing things,” says Robert Harris, the systems redesign coordinator at the Providence VA. “Valarie and her students have a unique way of looking at things.” When an architect proposed installing pneumatic tubes in a new wing to shunt around blood samples, a team of URI engineering students deployed at the hospital to identify the return on investment. They followed samples from the patients to the lab, noting who carried them, the route and even how long the carrier waited for an elevator. They sought to put a price tag on the current method of human carriers and delivered it to the architect. The hospital is still drawing up plans for the wing, but architects are leaning against a pneumatic tube system partly as a result of the URI study. The hospital also implemented advice from Maier-Speredelozzi and her students about how to stock medical supply closets. The new system of pullout shelves on wheels makes accessing supplies faster

Engineers often think in terms of widgets. University of Rhode Island (URI) Industrial and systems engineering Associate Professor Valerie Maier- Speredelozzi thinks in terms of human lives. Since 2009, her research has led to improvements in patient care at the Providence Veterans Administration Medical Center, which serves some 35,000 patients annually. With the assistance of her students, Maier- Speredelozzi applies the latest in systems research — usually associated with factories — to the VA hospital. “The methods are the same either way, but the implications at the VA are more personal,” she says. “If you improve the efficiency of a manufacturing line by 10 percent, it improves the bottom line. If you improve the efficiency of a hospital by 10 percent, now my 3.5-hour doctor’s appointment is shorter.” The VA faces immense pressure from politicians and the public to serve the nation’s veterans with speed and quality. By collaborating with the University of

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