February 11, 2022

Simplifying Tomorrow's Healthcare, Today

Step aboard with Blackbox, where the skies are blue and the future of healthcare is bright.

Cabin crew, please take your seats and prepare for takeoff.
Many have asked me, “Why the name Blackbox Healthcare Solutions? What is a blackbox, anyway?” Well, trusty Google University tells me that a black box is a “flight recorder that records the performance and condition of an aircraft in flight.” How about Wikipedia Britannica? Always faithful and truthful Wikipedia tells me that a black box or flight data recorder “preserves the recent history of a flight through the recording of dozens of parameters collected several times per second.”
Where my explanation can safely land with my extensive academic research is that the purpose of a black box is to assist and facilitate in the investigation of aeronautical incidents. These investigations are to improve the flight industry so that severe mishaps don’t happen. Black boxes are also used to pull data regarding the flights in order to be utilized for industry improvements in things like airplane fuel efficiency. In short, a black box device takes data from multiple different sources and stores it for any future need. It quantifies the data coupled with the cockpit voice recorder to tell a story.
If you’ve ever sat at a table with me for a discussion, you know that I’m always looking for analogies to make sense of whatever complexity is in front of me. I compare the industry improvements in things like airplane fuel efficiency to improvements in healthcare such as hospital throughput. If only there was a healthcare black box that could pull data from multiple disparate sources and tell a story of how to make healthcare seamless and efficient. If only there was a clear story that could be quantified and told from one source that would help to improve day-to-day operations. If only…
This. This is why Blackbox Healthcare Solutions. This is why we’re here. We believe that we can make a difference by connecting data with process and operations to create a seamless patient and clinician experience.
I’m a passionate individual. I’m sure my former leaders would tell you that I’m a difficult employee. I own that. I’m difficult because when I believe in something, I’m barreling down the runway at 500mph until the project is successfully flying at the perfect altitude. I do that because I believe in the outcome and at Blackbox Healthcare Solutions, I believe we can simplify the lives of hospital leaders, clinicians, and the patients they serve. We are that black box that looks at the healthcare system or the healthcare industry improvement opportunities. Our data tells a story of opportunity, advancement, and simplification and we believe in building processes that continuously analyze the data your black box is collecting to smoothen all flights in your future. 
We don’t have some secret sauce of a program that will make life so much simpler. We don’t have a patented or trademarked thing that will make this happen. What we do have is a team of industry experts with an abundance of experience working around the country, understanding what is happening, understanding what can be done, and understanding what has been successful in this climb out of the COVID cave.  
We recognize that healthcare leaders today are in survival mode - running around their respective hospitals resolving multiple situations simultaneously while stressing about how they will staff the next shift. Throughput efficiency improvement will give hours back to your staff, requiring less time of them and ultimately less team members. Throughput efficiency improvement will give hours back to your leaders. Let us take this off your plate by taking off with Blackbox.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Blackbox Healthcare Solutions welcomes you to the future of healthcare. The local time is NOW. Thank you for choosing to fly with us and together we are,
simplifying tomorrow's healthcare, today.

This Is Why I Do What I Do

One gas station. One grocery store. One stoplight. After being raised in small-town Kent City, Michigan, our Chief Nursing Officer writes about how growing up in rural America gave him one mission – to simplify healthcare for all.

by
Charley Larsen

We Futureproofed Healthcare

We partnered with vendors; we refined processes and operations; we left no stone unturned. While we still had a long way to go, after one year of operations under this new scope and authority, we grew our outreach by 14% and accepted more than 2,500 additional patients through our virtual front door, adding $14,000,000 dollars to the organization’s bottom line.

by
Charley Larsen

Adventures as an Amateur Craftsman

Those in healthcare know that we consistently find exposed leaks and clogs when reviewing throughput, but how do we repair the piping that is patient flow? 

by
Charley Larsen

Fail to Plan, Plan to Fail

Patient throughput is at the forefront of nearly every significant challenge we’re facing as an industry today. We need efficiencies; we need data; we need improvement; we need a plan.

by
Charley Larsen

Perfection

“We will be perfect in every aspect of the game. You drop a pass, you run a mile. You miss a blocking assignment, you run a mile. You fumble the football, and I will break my foot off in your John Brown hind parts and then you will run a mile. Perfection. Let's go to work.” — Coach Herman Boone, Remember the Titans. What if the public healthcare consumer had the same expectations of us as Coach Herman Boone did of his football players? Would they be wrong?

by
Charley Larsen

My New Lunchbox

In my new job, I get to see what healthcare heroes are doing at the frontline. I get to see the staffing challenges that nurses are enduring- what used to be the unthinkable is now the norm. The administrators get it, they aren’t disconnected, and they’re desperately trying to help. Nurses today are taking care of twice the number of patients they had previously cared for, and they’re literally doing it in a heroic fashion.

by
Charley Larsen