Sylvester Team is Florida Sterling Showcase Champion
A multidisciplinary and talented team from Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center presented a project called “Letting Go” of Denied Charges to Build a Lean Healthcare System at the 26th Annual Florida Sterling Conference, took home the top team prize, and patients are benefiting from their work. The 12-minute presentation included a song-and-dance performance with a Frozen theme.
Poster winners, from left, Lauren Gjolaj, Lauren Gallegos, B.S.N., RN, Angela Olier-Pino, M.B.A., D.N.P., ARNP, Julia Khalil, Pharm.D., Rohanmi Perez, B.S.N., RN, Gloria Campos, Denise Perez, B.S.N., RN.
“Presenting our project journey at the Florida Sterling annual conference was truly rewarding. It was a great opportunity to step back and celebrate how the success of our project has improved patient and provider experience,” said Gloria Campos, M.S.I.E., senior project manager.
The focus of the project is decreasing denied charges for chemotherapy, aligning with Sylvester’s vision of generating resources to sustain and enhance innovative cancer programs. Team members leveraged their combined knowledge of Lean Six Sigma tools and methodologies to identify root causes and adopt solutions. This resulted in reducing the amount of denied charges by $101 million over three years. Other accomplishments include a decrease in patient rescheduling due to lack of authorization, and a decrease in patients not financially cleared prior to their visits.
The Florida Sterling Conference Team Showcase competition provides a forum for participating teams to display the principles and techniques of solving problems, improving processes, reducing cycle time or costs, and contributing to the organization achieving performance excellence.
Sylvester’s Sterling winners.
The annual conference also included a poster competition. This year, Sylvester Research Administration competed against nine other posters and won with “Utilizing Voice of the Customer in Clinical Research to Drive Plan Do Study Act Process Improvement” by Lauren Gjolaj, M.B.A, B.S.N., RN, and Avantika Dang, M.H.A. The poster demonstrated how Sylvester used Six Sigma tools to make positive changes in its Clinical Trials Office.
“The success of the project would not have been possible without our incredible Sylvester team and the support of our director, Dr. Stephen Nimer, and our medical director of precision medicine, Dr. Jonathan Trent,” said Gjolaj.
Tags: Sterling Conference