Through the Lens of Systems

This video series is intended to educate those working in emergency healthcare on the concepts, challenges, and improvement ideas related to systems of care for time sensitive conditions, like STEMI, stroke, cardiac arrest, trauma and sepsis. Like the gears of a clock, all the parts of a system have to work together. But when the parts do not fit together with precision; when there’s friction between parts; when the parts do not move in coordination – EMS systems and these time sensitive systems of care fall short of their potential. The episodes are usually around 10 minutes in length and each covers one very specific topic. 

System of Care Concepts - Part 1: What is a System?

This post begins our series with an exploration of the concept of systems of care. We start out with a discussion of the definition of a system and introduce the idea of systems thinking. We then look at how that applies to improving clinical quality and economic efficiency in systems of care, particularly for high-risk time-sensitive conditions like cardiac arrest. This post features an excerpt from an amazing lecture given by the late Dr. Russell Ackoff – a major contributor to the field of systems thinking.

Duration: 9 min 5 sec

Systems of Care Concepts: Best Parts Do Not Make Best Systems

This post explores the sometimes counter-intuitive fact that having all of the best individually performing parts does not necessarily provide the best performing system. This idea is illustrated with an example of systems of care for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. 

Duration: 7 min 24 se

Systems of Care Concepts - Part 3: Quality, Cost, and Value

This post introduces the concept of value and how it relates to quality and cost. An example is given for using quality and cost data to calculate value in the delivery of care for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.

Duration: 5 min 47 sec

Systems of Care Concepts - Part 4: Systems of Care

In this forth segment of the series on Systems Concepts, we take a deeper look into the systems of care concept to understand all of the elements and organizations that are involved. We use stroke systems of care as the example. 

Duration: 5 min. 48 sec.