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.

The Data Puzzle

Let me warn you - healthcare data puzzles rarely play fair. They are notorious for arriving at the party without all their pieces, some forget their boxes, and a very small percentage brings a clear picture of what you’re trying to solve. If you’re like me, those challenges only make data puzzles more enticing. How many pieces are in your puzzle, begging to be put together to show a clear picture of patient throughput?

by
Erin Tams

Yes...but not yet

There is no better time in healthcare than now. It wasn't that long ago that I stood at the ICU bedside, exclaiming to my colleagues that "This is a hospital, not a hotel..." (insert cringe) as we complained about needy patients or needy family members. Boy was I wrong! Little did we know that when we selected healthcare as a college major, that we were in fact selecting hospitality. With that, we must think and act like we're in the service industry. We would never imagine a concept of "yes, but not yet" in a service industry such as auto sales, so why do we accept it in healthcare?

by
Charley Larsen