When it comes to quality medical care — consistent service, aiming for an ideal patient experience, measurable results and meeting exacting demands — there’s a lot on the line in health care. If a complex problem needs to be broken down, processes analyzed, workflow investigated and results assessed, who do you call? The UF Health Shands Operational Effectiveness department.
Formerly known as Management Engineering, the team has always had a focus on industrial engineering, a profession that uses science, math and engineering approaches to improve and integrate complex processes, systems and organizations.
Meet the team
LaKesha Fountain, Operational Effectiveness Director, works with Cristina Galloway and David Lucius, process engineering consultants, as well as industrial engineering students from the UF Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering.
(L to R) David Lucius, Cristina Galloway, LaKesha Fountain and Paige Dudziak
Galloway and the interns are industrial engineers, while Fountain and Lucius have backgrounds in business operations and project management. Fountain also served in the U.S. Army as a logistics platoon leader and company commander, among other titles.
Their approach to hardwiring positive change
“We have changed our mission since I’ve been here,” explained Fountain, who recently celebrated her third anniversary at UF Health Shands. “We changed the department name and we changed the focus. We used to give a lot of recommendations, but we couldn’t always get people to implement them. Now, we sit right there and watch you implement.”
How they work
“We go into different departments based off a multitude of things. It could be a focus on patient satisfaction scores or it could be about a new piece of equipment and the staff needs a process to help with implementation. We look at our customer’s processes and find ways to help them work more efficiently and more effectively,” Fountain said.
The team will sit with members of a department, shadow them and watch them do their work every day so they can understand their daily duties.
“We offer a variety of services. But in the end, it’s all about helping people and departments become more effective operationally,” Fountain said.
The Learning Leader Lab
In December, the team partnered with UF Health Shands Human Resources Development to offer a Learning Leader Lab class for representatives from many UF Health Shands and UF Health core departments. They addressed a holistic leadership approach and touched on cognitive and emotional elements of leading, as well as the operational and data-driven elements.
“A lot of what we do has to do with metrics, but it’s also about process. Are you spinning your wheels and getting nowhere?” Fountain explained. “Do you have clear handoffs with the teams you work with? Some teams don’t work well with others and we can help with that. Sometimes, managers don’t think there is a solution to a problem and think they just have to deal with it. But we can help.”
Fountain says that every problem can be measured and every measurement can be analyzed — which means there is a solution somewhere.
For assistance, find them on the Bridge intranet under Bridge.UFHealth.org/shands-operational-effectiveness and pull up the Services tab to request a project.