Mustafa Ozkaynak's Blog

ISERC 2014 Heath Systems Track Co-Chair

mozkaynak — Sat, 28 Sep 2013 17:14:22 +0000

I am happy to volunteer as a Health Systems Track Co-Chair for ISERC 2014 which will be held in Montreal on May 31-June 3, 2014. Here is the Call for Papers.

2014 Industrial and Systems Engineering Research Conference
Palais des Congrés de Montréal, Montréal, Canada
May 31 – June 3, 2014

Tracks: HEALTHCARE MODELING AND HEALTHCARE SYSTEMS
Deadline for Abstract Submission is Friday, November 22, 2013
Abstracts are required to be between 100 and 200 words

Abstract submission site: https://www.xcdsystem.com/iie2014/

Conference web site: www.iienet.org/annual

Dear Colleagues,

The Society for Health Systems of the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE) is sponsoring the Healthcare Modeling and Healthcare Systems Tracks at the 2014 Industrial and Systems Engineering Research Conference (ISERC). The ISERC, which is part of the IIE Annual Conference and Expo, is a forum for exchanging knowledge and discoveries in the industrial and systems engineering research community.

As track chairs of the Healthcare Modeling and Healthcare Systems Tracks, we would like to encourage you to contribute to the conference by submitting an abstract. Authors of accepted abstracts will be invited to present their work in ISERC sessions. Each session will be 75 minutes and have 3 or 4 presenters. Abstracts are welcome in the following areas:

Healthcare Modeling Track

Operations Research
Medical Decision Making
Simulation
Scheduling
Facility Logistics
Supply Chain Management

Healthcare Systems Track

Human factors
Patient Safety
Work Systems
Quality
Technology
Lean

We strongly encourage all presenters to submit a full length paper for the conference proceedings. The papers should contain results that are significant and have archival value to the industrial and systems engineering research community. Full papers have a ten-page limit and will undergo a double-blind peer review process. All accepted papers are indexed by ProQuest. IIE is currently working on uploading papers of previous years onto the IIE website. Presentations without a paper are acceptable, but will not be indexed in the conference proceedings.

The important deadlines for the conference are:

Abstract submissions: November 22, 2013
Notification of Decision on Abstract: December 19, 2013
Submission of Full Papers (optional but encouraged): January 23, 2014
Notification of Decision on Paper: February 22, 2014
Final Version of Full paper Due: March 8, 2014
Presenting Author Registration Deadline: March 15, 2014

If your abstract or paper is accepted: (a) the presenting author for the paper must register for the conference by March 15, 2014 (presentations/papers without the presenting author being registered for the conference will be withdrawn from the program and the proceedings); (b) the presenting author must attend and present the paper at the conference; and (c) we ask that you be ready to serve as a reviewer for fellow authors and follow review deadlines.

There are also opportunities to organize invited sessions or panels; please contact us if you are interested (contact information below). In addition to research presentations, the annual conference offers many opportunities for attendees, including the Applied Solutions Conference program, plant tours, networking, and keynote speakers.

We look forward to seeing you in Montréal!

Regards,

Bryan A. Norman (banorman@pitt.edu) and Kevin Taaffe (taaffe@clemson.edu)

Healthcare Modeling Track Chairs

Mustafa Ozkaynak (mustafa.ozkaynak@ucdenver.edu) and Lesley Strawderman (strawderman@ise.msstate.edu)

Healthcare Systems Track Chairs

Paper accepted to Methods of Information in Medicine

mozkaynak — Tue, 02 Jul 2013 02:19:08 +0000

Another paper based on my dissertation study got accepted to the Journal of Methods of Information in Medicine. The paper entitled “An Observation Tool for Studying Patient-Oriented Workflow in Hospital Emergency Departments.” It is a collaborative work with my PhD advisor, Patti Brennan. The abstract of the paper is as follows:

Background: Studying workflow is a critical step in designing, implementing and evaluating informatics interventions in complex sociotechnical settings, such as hospital emergency departments (EDs). Known approaches to studying workflow in clinical settings attend to the activities of individual clinicians, thus being inadequate to characterize patient care as a cooperative work.

Objectives: The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, we introduce a novel, theory-driven patient-oriented workflow methodology, which better addresses the complex, multiple-provider nature of patient care. Second, we report the development of an observational tool and protocol for use in studies of this type, and the results of an evaluation study.

Methods: We created a tablet computer implementation of an instrument to efficiently capture patient-oriented workflow, and evaluated it through a field study in three EDs. We focused on activities occurring over time during a single patient care episode as well as the roles of the ED staff members who conducted the activities.

Results: The evidence generated supports the validity, viability, and reliability of the tool. The coverage of the tool in terms of activities and roles was satisfactory. The tool was able to capture the sequence of activity-role pairs for 108 patient care episodes. The inter-rater reliability assessment yielded a high kappa value (0.79).

Discussion: The patient-oriented workflow methodology has the potential to facilitate modeling patient care in EDs by characterizing both roles and activities in sequence. The methodology also provides researchers and practitioners a more realistic and comprehensive workflow perspective that can inform the design, implementation and evaluation of health information technology interventions.

Guest Lecture at Georgetown University

mozkaynak — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 23:42:41 +0000

Today, I was fortunate to talk about patient-centered care and Health-IT at an OPIM 513, Service Operations class in Georgetown University. Here is an appealing question by the instructor of the class (Dr. Camdereli): “Can we trust the data coming from the patient?”

Presenting at Informs Healthcare 2013

mozkaynak — Sat, 25 May 2013 07:12:06 +0000

I will be presenting at Informs Healthcare 2013 which takes place in Chicago on June 23-26. The title of my presentation is Identifying Complex Patients and Care Coordination Needs. The co-authors are Jennifer Donovan, Sharon Johnson, Abir Kanaan, Adam Rose and Bengisu Tulu. The abstract is as follow:

We explored the care of complex patients who receive anticoagulation therapy, identifying patient complexity factors (comorbidities, alcohol addiction and lack of daily living resources) as well as care coordination challenges. Identified challenges were grouped as organizational, interdisciplinary and lack of community resources. We then qualitatively examined the relationships between complexity factors and challenge categories, to inform the design of processes and other structural elements of care.

Joining CU College of Nursing

mozkaynak — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 04:02:23 +0000

I am very happy to announce that I will join the College of Nursing at University of Colorado-Denver as a faculty. My appointment starts on August 1st, 2013. I will continue my research on patient-oriented workflow and teach informatics courses there.

Paper accepted to JAMIA

mozkaynak — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 06:32:01 +0000

Our paper entitled “Patient-centered care requires a patient-oriented workflow model” and coauthored by myself and 6 other distinguished researcher will appear at the Journal of American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA). The paper can be retrieved at http://jamia.bmj.com/content/early/2013/03/27/amiajnl-2013-001633.abstract .

Presenting at ISERC 2013

mozkaynak — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 20:33:52 +0000

Our abstract entitled “Preparing For the Worst: A Key for Better Anticoagulation Management” got accepted to the 2013 Industrial and Systems Engineering Research Conference (ISERC) which will take place in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Other authors are Drs. Sharon Johnson, Adam Rose, Abir Kanaan, Jennifer Donovan and Bengisu Tulu. Following is the abstract of our submitted paper.

Case studies are useful for studying complex work systems when direct data collection about rare and challenging situations is not practical using in situ field methodologies, such as observations or archival studies, such as review of medical records. Careful examination of challenging situations can support healthcare organizations appropriate response to the worst situations. The purpose of this study is to identify characteristics of challenging situations in the management of oral anticoagulation and to develop guidelines for work interventions. Managing oral anticoagulation with warfarin is challenging because of the narrow therapeutic range. The therapy can easily lead to harm both from excessive anticoagulation and insufficient anticoagulation. We collected 33 memorable cases that include description of complex patients and their anticoagulation management by interviewing 23 staff members from six VA affiliated anticoagulation clinics. Data revealed that complex cases were typically patients who could not be reached easily and patients who could not change their lifestyle as required by the treatment. Memorable cases also included tensions with other clinicians. Health information technologies can be designed to improve the quality of anticoagulation management by supporting follow-up and increasing adherence. The staffing structure at anticoagulation clinics can be improved to ensure better anticoagulation therapy.

Paper Accepted to Health Systems

mozkaynak — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 23:43:10 +0000

Health Systems, which is is an interdisciplinary journal promoting the idea that all aspects of health and healthcare delivery can be viewed from a systems perspective, accepted our paper entitled “Characterizing patient care in hospital emergency departments”. The abstract of the paper is as follows:

The purpose of this study is to characterize the early stage (i.e., until first prescriber order) of patient care in emergency departments (EDs) by focusing on the temporal sequence of activities by multiple roles. A hundred and eight patient care episodes in three EDs were observed and modeled as patient-oriented workflows. Capturing individual episodes allowed us to account for cooperative work in EDs. Data analysis revealed a high level of variability across patient care episodes. We also identified six patterns differentiated primarily by whether the prescriber is a physician or midlevel clinician. Secondary differentiators included whether the patient arrived in the ED as walk-in or via ambulance, and in which ED the patient care occurred. The high level of workflow variability reported in this study should be recognized in the design of ED work
systems. Moreover, work interventions should not limit EDs’ capacity to handle sequential variability in patient care.

Two presentations at INFORMS 2012 Conference

mozkaynak — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 02:32:46 +0000

I am excited about presenting two of my recent works at the INFORMS 2012 conference. My first talk entitled “Exploring Workflow Patterns in Emergency Departments”. Here is the brief abstract of my talk: “Emergency Departments (ED) in the US are facing a national crisis. Relevant research suggests looking at ED care processes and modifying them as needed to improve their efficiency and effectiveness. We conducted a field study in three hospital EDs and captured early stages of 108 patient care episodes. We identified six patterns. These patterns may inform the design, implementation and evaluation of systematic engineering interventions that will lead to lower cost and higher quality of care.”

My second talk is about the Secure Messaging Project. The title of the talk is “Understanding Secure Messaging Patterns between Patients and Care Teams” The abstract of my talk is as follows : “Secure messaging (SM), electronic and asynchronous communication between patients and healthcare teams, is a core function of personal health records systems. We examine SM patterns in two medical centers. Understanding these patterns allows obstacles and facilitators of SM use to be identified, and provides opportunities for improving care delivery at the operations and policy level.”

Presenting at AMIA 2012 Annual Symposium

mozkaynak — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 02:20:25 +0000

Our poster submission entitled “Informatics Opportunities for Better Anticoagulation Management” will be presented at the American Medical Informatics (AMIA) 2012 Conference. Here is the abstract of our submission:

Oral anticoagulation management with warfarin is a challenging therapy from both providers’ and patients’ perspectives. To identify how anticoagulation clinics overcome these challenges, we analyzed interviews of fifty-five staff members from six clinics in the Veterans Health Administration System. The analysis revealed four themes that suggest medical informatics interventions can support safer and patient centered care. Design and implementation of such interventions should consider the spatial boundaries and complexity of anticoagulation therapy.