Pre-conference Workshops - Wednesday, Feb. 26

Take advantage of the opportunity to enhance your skills and boost your learning by participating in a pre-conference workshop. Learn from experienced practitioners who will address your concerns about healthcare. They are open to all registered conference attendees and require a separate fee.

8 a.m. - Noon

How to Create an Effective Curriculum to Train Acculturated Staff within your Health Organization

Presenters: Grisselle Centeno, Florida Polytechnic University and Jana Iezzi, Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare

This workshop is designed for performance improvement (PI) leaders interested in developing a course or curriculum for established staff at all levels in their organization. Participants will learn about curriculum development and how to design courses, projects, activities or educational materials that provide the foundation of lean and Six Sigma and that contribute directly to driving outcomes in healthcare environments.

Participants will learn to:

• Promote organizational goals by designing a curriculum that provides the basic concepts and fundamentals of lean and Six Sigma.
• Identify, develop, facilitate and lead performance improvement initiatives in alignment with the values of their institutions.
• Effectively communicate and facilitate educational and training initiatives.
• Assist the executive team and management in driving improvement and maintaining established results.

About the presenters
Dr. Grisselle Centeno is a professor in the Department of Data Science and Business Analytics and the director for the Healthcare Systems Engineering Program at Florida Polytechnic University. She is also a co-director for the Health Systems Scholarly Concentration Program at the Morsani College of Medicine at the University of South Florida. Dr. Centeno has been teaching for over 20 years and has received teaching awards and recognition for her efforts in higher education. For over 12 years, Dr. Centeno has engaged and led projects with healthcare organizations including Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa General Hospital, Baycare, HCA, Halifax, Lakeland Regional Health and James Hailey Veterans’ Affairs among others.

Jana Iezzi, is the VP and chief improvement officer for Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare. She leads the organization’s improvement program and is responsible for improving the effectiveness and efficiency of all services provided by the organization. She is also responsible for customer service, developing clinical pathways and guidelines, development of data models to support improvement, regulatory readiness and infection control. Previous to this position, Jana served as the director of performance improvement at Halifax Health in Daytona, FL. She also worked for over 10 years with VHA Southeast Inc., in multiple roles related to performance improvement. Jana holds a bachelor's degree in industrial engineering and a master's in engineering management from the University of South Florida.  

Dr. Centeno and Ms. Iezzi received the 1st place in the HSPI poster competition in 2019 for their work titled: “Academic and Industry Collaborative Lean Six Sigma Course” – which motivated the design of this workshop.

Achieving a Breakthrough in the Quality, Safety, Access and Affordability of Care

Presenter: Alex Knight, Founding Partner, QFI 

This workshop will analyze the core dilemma facing health care systems around the world and demonstrate a breakthrough in the quality, safety, access and affordability of care is possible in a remarkably short time scale using the Theory of Constraints based approach demonstrated in Alex Knight's business novel Pride and Joy. This workshop will be highly interactive and give the participants the opportunity to run the famous 'dice game' which demonstrates the core issues around patient flow in any health care system. There will also be the opportunity to see how to analyze a healthcare system using the Theory of Constraints and how to quickly focus improvement efforts for results in a remarkable short time scale. The participants will also be given the opportunity to see latest thinking around making capacity decisions in healthcare environments with large uncertainty.

About the presenter
Alex Knight, BSc, MBA, CEng, is a founding partner of QFI and inventor of Theory of Constraints-based solutions. For nearly three decades he has been working around the world alongside many great leaders in healthcare, social care, for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. His consulting, speaking, lecturing and coaching work has shown him first-hand the joys and struggles people face in their endeavors to improve their services and businesses.

For the last 15 years, Alex has been building, testing and verifying a Theory of Constraints solution for healthcare. The solution has been tested in acute, community and mental health settings in the UK, the Netherlands, Canada, the United States and Australia. On completion of the solution, Alex and the team have focused their attention on building the education, implementation and software elements to ensure the solution’s robustness, sustainability and scalability.

Knight previously served as Managing Director of Ashridge Consulting Ltd. and Chief Executive of Goldratt Consulting. Knight was mentored for three decades by Eliyahu M. Goldratt, the inventor of the Theory of Constraints and author of The Goal. Knight followed in his mentor’s footsteps with the novel Pride and Joy, which reviewers have dubbed The Goal for the healthcare industry.

1 - 5 p.m.

Engaging and Teaching Improvement Concepts to Staff through Interactive, Hands-On Simulations

Presenter: Ashley J. Benedict, VA Sunshine Healthcare Network (VISN 8)

This workshop highlights how interactive simulations can be integrated into a curriculum and encourages participants to learn hands-on. Simulations can demonstrate improvement tools, variability in process, how a small change can have a large impact, importance of communication, and taking time to work on improvement can improve the patient’s and staff’s experience.

The VA Sunshine Healthcare Network (VISN 8), the nation’s largest system of hospitals and clinics serving a population of more than 1.6 million Veterans, implemented a Lean Six Sigma (LSS) Program in 2012. Over the past eight years, VISN 8 has worked to improve our LSS trainings and purchased a simulation kit that has transformed how we provide our trainings. In addition, we use simulated activities such as the tennis ball PDSA, 5S numbers game, and other facilitation exercises to challenge the students to think past the conceptual ideas. These modifications to the program have allowed the program to better align with strategic goals, constraints and opportunities. Participants in the VISN 8 LSS Green and Black Belt trainings use a Lego simulation to practice applying the LSS tools to an outpatient clinical setting.

Trainees complete a SIPOC, process map, data collection plan and spaghetti diagram. Simulation is a great way to demonstrate variability in process, how a small change can have a large impact, the importance of communication, and taking time to work on improvement can improve the patient’s and staff’s experience. The teams conduct a 5S on their “clinic” and introduce visual management along with developing new standard work. This workshop will highlight ways simulation has been integrated into our belt curriculum. For the purposes of this workshop, the main simulation used will be a Lego Simulation, but the concepts and tips can be applied in general.

About the presenter
Ashley J. Benedict, Ph.D. is the VISN System Redesign Coordinator (Lean Six Sigma Program Manager) for the VA Sunshine Healthcare Network (VISN 8).  She leads improvement within VISN 8 as they continue their journey to implement Lean Six Sigma and data driven solutions. VISN 8 has developed the Lean Six Sigma Program into a standardized program across the Network. For the Lean Six Sigma Program, Ashley has worked with the Systems Redesign team to develop standard work for the program including tools, tollgates, and training slides. She received her B.S. and M.E. degrees in industrial engineering from the University of Florida. After completing her bachelor’s degree, Ashley went to work for Shands HealthCare (now UFHealth) in Gainesville, Florida, as a management engineer. In August 2011, she graduated with her Ph.D. in industrial engineering with a focus on human factors from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. Ashley was part of the New England Veterans Engineering Resource Center (VERC) in Boston, Massachusetts, prior to her current role.

Ashley is involved in the Society for Health Systems, within the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers, and has previously served as a board member and president. You can find Ashley on LinkedIn or Instagram.

How to Design a Stress-Free Workplace

Presenter: Davana Pilczuk, Human Performance Specialist

Numerous studies have found that work is often our number one stressor in our lives and industrial engineers, medical staff and process improvement teams have a unique opportunity to fix that. Attendees will learn three key ways to reduce stress in the workplace and how to tweak existing workspaces so that they help people perform better. Hands-on principles from ergonomics (such as patient handling, noise levels, and shift work) will be taught and can be easily brought back to any medical facility. Attendees will also learn how circadian rhythms, work-rest cycles and human physiology affect how we perform at different times of day (and why we all get grumpy at 2:55 p.m.). Finally, attendees will learn a powerful technique to get existing teams to perform their work more effectively while minimizing interpersonal conflict, which can ultimately lead to a high stress environment. By learning ergonomic design concepts and designing work for the humans who do it, we can create workplaces where both employees and patients can feel calm, focused and more productive.

About the Presenter
Dr. Davana Pilczuk is an award-winning kinesiologist who specializes in the field of human performance. Her mission is to help corporate, sport and organizational teams perform better on the field or in the boardroom. She brings a unique skill set to help individuals and teams realize their potential by teaching principles from sport psychology, physiology and engineering. She has been featured on WTOC’s Mid-Morning Live Show, in the Smithsonian Air and Space magazine and on the cover of ISE magazine. She’s been a keynote for over 15 companies and universities worldwide and recently received OSHA’s VPPP Innovation Award for her program work at Cintas.

She focuses on helping people understand how to work with the physiology of their bodies and brains. By learning about the science of physical and mental fatigue, stress, anxiety, and how our environments affect our performance, she helps businesses and teams out-perform the competition.

She has consulted for companies such as Amazon, Savannah College of Art and Design, BCG Medical Group and several divisions of Berkshire Hathaway. Previously, she managed the corporate wellness, ergonomics and human performance programs for Gulfstream Aerospace.

She is a columnist for the Savannah Morning News, writing the biweekly column ‘Finish Line’ and has been featured in numerous journals, magazines and YouTube videos. In 2012, she was awarded the Practitioner of the Year award by the Institute of Industrial Engineers for her outstanding achievement in creating Gulfstream’s ergonomics program. Under her tenure, the Gulfstream ergonomics program received eight additional international awards and is annually benchmarked by Fortune 500 companies.

Previously, she lived in the United Kingdom and worked as a sports psychology and fitness consultant for the British National Swim Team. She also taught for seven years at Auburn University in the kinesiology, engineering and psychology departments.

She received her masters and doctorate degrees in kinesiology from Auburn University, a specialty in engineering from Auburn University and her bachelor’s degree from the University of Miami, in Coral Gables, Florida.