Month: April 2013

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Advisory Board Formation

Wednesday, April 24th, 2013 – Annapolis, MD; USA

Optimium Health, Inc. is pleased to announce that Todd Lazenby and Hank Steinbrecher have joined its Advisory Board. Todd brings considerable experience from the world of private equity and investment banking and has a passion for helping young companies achieve commercial and financial success. Hank has a proven track record taking an underdeveloped organization and fueling its growth to a level of international recognition by forming strategic partnerships, gaining grassroots support and participation, and developing a long-term vision for success and growth.

R. Todd Lazenby – Finance

Todd is the founding partner of Victory Partners, LLC and Royal Ascot Partners, LLC. He brings 22 years of private equity, investment banking, and corporate finance experience to the firm, having held increasing senior level positions in start-ups, mid-sized and Fortune 500 companies. He has built an investment firm that has made control investments in companies comprising over $300 million in enterprise value and has arranged and overseen in excess of $2.5 billion in capital markets and mergers & acquisitions transactions. Prior to founding VP and RAP, Todd was the Managing Partner of Summit Capital Partners, LLC in Los Angeles, then the managing partner of WP Capital Partners, L.P. in Dallas, both merchant banking firms representing middle market companies on a national basis.

Todd holds a JD from UC Berkeley Boalt Hall School of Law, an MS from Stanford University Graduate School of Business, and an MBA and a BS in Communications from Florida State University.

Hank Steinbrecher – Business Development

National Soccer Hall of Famer Hank Steinbrecher has had a life-long relationship with sport and possesses the strategic thinking skills that have made U.S. Soccer an international force. As Secretary General of the United States Soccer Federation and CEO of US Soccer throughout the 1990’s, Hank took a lead role in securing sponsors to fund its grassroots outreach and financial growth. By the end of the decade, the U.S. Men had appeared in three World Cups, won a Gold Cup, and established a national fan base. For the U.S. Women, success meant two Women’s World Cup crowns and their first of four Olympic Gold Medals. Hank was also at the forefront of the Soccer Summit, bringing together leaders from across the American soccer landscape to chart the course of the sport into the next millennium. That course would eventually result in the U.S. hosting the 1994 World Cup and the birth of Major League Soccer, the highest level of professional club soccer ever seen in the United States.

After 10 years at the helm of US Soccer, Hank is now President of Touchline Consultants Inc. Touchline specializes in strategic planning for sports organizations, management of large international sporting events, and developing sales, marketing and distribution strategies for major product companies.

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Why Your Hospital Should LEAN Forward

Mark Graban, the author of Lean Hospitals, asserts that, “waste is any problem that pops up during the day that delays care.” And Christopher Kim, MD, MBA, of the Departments of Internal Medicine and Pediatrics at the University of Michigan asserts, “up to 40% of time spent in hospitals is waste.” The article from which these quotations came is nearly 5 years old but the situations it describes are no less true in 2013 than they were in 2008.

Bad Processes Lead to Waste

We whole heartedly support the hospital LEAN movement and why your hospital should LEAN forward. Bad processes lead to waste. Waste leads to higher costs, lower employee satisfaction, and compromised patient outcomes. No one wants to blindly perpetuate that destructive cycle. Equally important, in today’s environment of increasing demand for services and decreasing amounts of reimbursements, hospitals must address HOW work gets done (the process) and not simply WHAT work gets done (the task) if they are to survive the profit squeeze.

The strength of LEAN initiatives is the critical examination of clinical processes, breaking them down into parts, and eliminating waste through a series of deliberate steps. The weakness of LEAN initiatives is poor sustainability, in large part because workflow technology is not part of the LEAN strategy and people revert to old behaviors that compromise the LEAN initiative.

Technology Offers Repeatable, Measurable, Sustainable Results

Thus, whether you use our clinical workflow technology, OPTIMI$ER, or build your own process solution, we strongly advise you make workflow technology part of your LEAN strategy. Keep in mind, defining a technology solution should follow the hard work of understanding how people currently do their work, mapping the current state process, and then determining the desired future state process. There is no value in automating a bad process! Process case studies across multiple clinical settings demonstrate how technology can help orchestrate clinical workflow in a repeatable, measurable, and sustainable way leading to:

  • a reduction of errors, omissions, duplications and delays
  • an increase in financial performance, employee productivity and satisfaction, and patient safety and satisfaction
  • a return on investment that can be achieved in 3-6 months

Please contact us if you would like to discuss opportunities for you to further your efforts to LEAN forward. Email vicki@waohi.azurewebsites.net.