Amy Smith's Background
Amy Smith, RN, JD is a principal and founder of the Bay Area Lean Institute, an organization dedicated to helping health care companies improve operations. Her primary area of expertise is transforming front line clinical departments to highly efficient and reliable teams.
Prior to forming the Bay Area Lean Institute, Amy spent 21 years with Kaiser Permanente. Most recently she managed the Surgery and Reconstructive Plastic Surgery clinics in Walnut Creek, California. The department serves over 351,000 members. Amy worked with surgeons and staff to run the day-to-day operations of the outpatient clinics. She transformed the department from one of the lowest performers in the Northern California Region to one of the best by implementing lean management principles over a three-year period. Amy also coached and mentored managers and physician leaders throughout Kaiser Permanente to implement performance improvement projects and manage using lean techniques. Amy had major clinical accomplishments including implementing video visits for wound care with community skilled nursing facilities and implementing care pathways for Colectomy, Gallbladder and Small Bowel Obstruction patients. Amy attended Kaiser’s Improvement Institute and is a certified Improvement Advisor.
Amy served three years as the Healthcare Ombudsman-Mediator for Kaiser Permanente at the Oakland and Richmond Medical Centers. She has worked in Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and Medical Groups in both the Northern and Southern California Regions. Her nursing background includes pediatrics, home health, and general medical-surgical nursing.
As an attorney Amy was Associate General Counsel/Compliance Advocate for Kaweah Delta Health Care District. She also served three years as the felony domestic violence prosecutor for Tulare County. Amy has a BSN from Mount Saint Mary’s College in Los Angeles (holding a public health certificate) and a JD from the University of La Verne College of Law in La Verne, CA. She is licensed with the California State Bar as an Attorney and the California Board of Registered Nursing.
About Wound Reference
WoundReference is the only decision support platform designed exclusively for wound care and hyperbaric oxygen clinicians. Our point-of-care tools enable clinicians to work more efficiently.
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How to set up and optimize your wound care formulary
Save time and money with a well planned wound care formulary. Learn how to setup an institutional formulary to better manage your inventory of dressings and bandages.
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Errors and Healthcare
Patient safety is a serious public health issue. Like obesity and motor vehicle crashes, harms caused during care have significant mortality, morbidity, quality-of-life implications, and adversely affect patients in every care setting. This topic provides a snapshot of current patient safety facts, helpful definitions in Patient Safety, factors that lead to errors, liability in Wound and Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy Programs, and actions that can be implemented to improve Patient Safety and reduce errors.
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Medicare Billing Protocol and Workflow
Hyperbaric oxygen therapy Medicare billing workflow for wound and hyperbaric therapy clinics.
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Medicare Billing Protocol - Appeal of Claim
Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy Overview of the Medicare Claim's Appeal Process
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Medicare Targeted Probe and Educate Protocol
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) Targeted Probe and Educate (TPE) Process is designed to help providers and suppliers reduce claims denials and appeals through one-on-one help. This topic provides guidance on how to successfully navigate the TPE process. It includes information on additional documentation request and latest results of recent TPE findings.
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Staffing Guidance for Wound Care Centers
Guidance on lean staffing for wound care centers. Identification of variables that impact staffing, staffing tool and tips
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Quality in Wound Care
This topic provides an update on Quality in wound care and how clinical decision support systems like WoundReference can help clinicians achieve better outcomes more efficiently. The topic lists resources such as a quality framework intended to be used for creation or assessment of wound care services, algorithms demonstrating application of evidence in product selection, quality measures specific to wound care, and guidance for wound and hyperbaric programs to successfully navigate the CMS Quality Payment Program (MIPS).
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Operational Policy: Advanced Wound Care Program Scope of Service
This topic serves as a basis for Wound Care Programs to adopt a Policy on Advanced Wound Care Program Scope of Service. The purpose of this Policy is to enable the Wound Care Program that adopts it to offer its services to patients whose medical needs can be met within the capability of the Wound Care Program's staff and facilities, and to ensure that all patients treated will receive high quality care in an expedient and professional manner.
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Telemedicine/ Televisit Implementation Playbook - Part 1
Telemedicine can be a plausible option to do more with less in wound care. The purpose of the first part of this playbook is to guide healthcare professionals in assessing the benefits telemedicine can bring to their practices.
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Telemedicine/ Televisit Implementation Playbook - Part 2
Telemedicine can be a plausible option to do more with less in wound care. This is the second installment of the Telemedicine/ Televisit Implementation Playbook. The first installment guides healthcare professionals in assessing the benefits telemedicine can bring to their practices. This topic provides a practical pathway for implementation of telemedicine solutions.
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Applying the Balanced Scorecard in Wound Management and Hyperbaric Medicine
Guidance on strategic planning and performance improvement tailored to wound care and hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) programs is still scarce. This topic provides an Editable Balanced Scorecard Tool with sample metrics for wound care and HBOT programs. Institutions can make a copy of the tool, and use it to select and monitor their own objectives and metrics, according to their own vision and mission.
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Improving Wound Care with a Lean Approach
It is not unusual for several weeks to pass before a patient with a serious wound receives the proper care for that wound. Every wound care specialist has experienced the following: a patient with ulcer goes to the emergency department (ED), the ED clinician applies a dressing and refers to a minor injury clinic. Minor injury clinic refers to the primary care physician (PCP), the PCP requires a visit for a look and see. PCP sends a request for authorization/ referral to see a
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Standard of Care: Foundations for Wound Management
Standard of Care: The Foundation of Wound Care
The standard of care is a diagnostic and treatment process that a clinician should follow for a certain type of patient, illness, or clinical circumstance. In other words, this is the level of care widely accepted in the medical community. (1)
In the wound community, we are quite familiar with the term standard of care as it was
