Closing the Loop by Operationalizing Systems Engineering and Design (CLOSED)
Motivation:
Specific Aims :
Aim 1:​Use systems engineering and patient engagement to design, develop, and refine a highly reliable “closed loop” system for diagnostic tests and referrals that ensures diagnostic orders and follow-up occur reliably within clinically- and patient-important time-frames.
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Aim 2: Use systems engineering and patient engagement to design, develop, and refine a highly reliable “closed loop” system for symptoms that ensures clinicians receive and act on feedback about evolving symptoms and physical findings of concern to patients or clinicians.
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Aim 3: Design for generalizability across health systems more broadly so that the processes created in Aims 1 and 2 are effective in (1) a practice in an underserved community, (2) a large tele-medicine system, and (3) a representative range of simulated other health system settings and populations.
Partners:
Sunday, June 2, 2019
Sunday, June 2, 2019
Approach:
Sunday, June 2, 2019
Results to Date:
VERC Center for Veterans Health Reform
The New England Veterans Engineering Resource Center (NE-VERC) has been established partnering Northeastern University's healthcare industrial engineering program with New England Veterans Affairs (VA), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and several VA centers of excellence. The partnership will develop and implement innovative industrial engineering solutions to dramatically improve process quality, access, safety, efficiency, and performance throughout the VA healthcare system, as well as New England and U.S. healthcare processes more broadly.
Supported initially by $3.4 million annually from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in grants and matching funding, the New England Veterans Engineering Resource Center (NE-VERC) is one of four new national Veterans Engineering Research Centers created in July 2009 that together represent the single largest investment in healthcare process improvement in the U.S.
Vision
The overall vision of the New England Veterans Engineering Resource Center (NE-VERC) is to integrate systems engineering principles and methods into the fabric of VA healthcare operations by building a unique collaboration to spread innovative engineering solutions. The objective is that the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) becomes a self-improving system with robust capabilities to address new needs arising over time. To accomplish this objective, NE-VERC has created a strong synergistic partnership between VISN 1, Northeastern University, and other academic partners that leverages our successful history of commitment and improvement of infrastructure, existing VISN 1 initiatives, and leading national academic experts in healthcare systems engineering and related fields.
V1NSI
The Veteran's Integrated Service Network (VISN)1 consists of 8 medical centers and 37 outpatient clinics in 6 states that have to serve 1.3M veterans and 2.5M outpatient visits per year.
