Former Joint Commission Resources Consultant Joins TeleTracking

PITTSBURGH, March 27, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Susan Whitehurst, a Lean Management hospital process expert and former consultant for Joint Commission Resources, Inc., has joined TeleTracking Technologies as Managing Director of Consulting Services, the firm announced today.

Ms. Whitehurst, a certified Six Sigma Master Black Belt, will focus on combining Lean principles with TeleTracking's technology solutions in order to improve processes, reduce wasted time and resources, smooth patient throughput and enhance operational performance efficiency.

Pittsburgh-based TeleTracking Technologies, world leader in automated patient flow, helps hospital and health systems optimize daily hospital functions via its real-time, automated healthcare operations management platform.

Ms. Whitehurst's Lean Six Sigma experience ideally complements TeleTracking's ongoing goal of supporting hospital care delivery through automation and process redesign. A special strength is her ability to illustrate the high cost of poor quality care delivery and demonstrate how process improvement can help reverse the problem.

Her consulting experience included leading Lean Sigma Kaizen events to aid hospitals in reducing preventable readmissions, hospital-acquired infections, surgical and medical pain management redesign, and medication safety. As the Project Manager for Joint Commission Resource's Hospital Engagement Network from 2011 to 2013, her team helped shape evidence-based strategies to reduce readmissions across network hospitals.

A former Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award examiner for North Carolina and co-author of the Healthcare Six Sigma program at North Carolina State University, Ms. Whitehurst joined Joint Commission Resources, consulting subsidiary of The Joint Commission, in 2008, later becoming project manager for the C.M.S. Partnership for Patients Campaign.

Previous to that, she enjoyed a 28-year career in intensive care nursing and hospital administration at Duke University Medical Center, where she served as Director of the Duke Heart Center, Associate Operating Officer of Perioperative Services, and Senior Associate COO of perioperative services, medical-surgical critical care, emergency and life flight services, and oncology services. She also directed support services that promoted patient flow efficiency and effectiveness such as Guest Services, Case Management and Patient Access Services.

About TeleTracking

For over two decades, TeleTracking Technologies has helped hospitals achieve better patient flow through automation and process redesign that takes the time lag out of daily operations. Today, TeleTracking provides an end-to-end platform that optimizes operations enterprise-wide in real-time. Real-Time Capacity Management™ solutions automate many of the physical functions of the hospital and monitor them in real time to increase efficiency in the delivery of care. This tighter operational control drives out waste (both time and resources), while still making sure that patients get to the right place at the right time with the right resources. TeleTracking provides process planning, patient flow redesign and asset management optimization through its consulting division, and has been rated by KLAS (www.KLASresearch.com) as the patient flow Category Leader seven times in the last eight years. For more information, visit www.teletracking.com and join the conversation at http://blog.teletracking.com/.

SOURCE TeleTracking Technologies