Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Last Week in the Deputy Minister's Office

This week is my last week in the DMO!
I will be moving to the Strategy and Innovation Branch Monday to finish the rest of my internship and begin my employment May 1st.

The Strategy and Innovation branch deals with Lean, Strategic Planning, and Capital. I'm pretty happy with the move (I'm only going across the hall) but I am sad to leave the DMO!

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Future State Lean and Capital Lean

Yesterday we finished mapping the future state of the briefing note process. The future state is how the ideal process would work. In our future state we will be able to eliminate a lot of waste in the process as a whole and create more accountability. Now we have to put our plan into action!

Also, a couple of weeks ago I was asked to join the capital lean team. Last week we took three days to map the current state of the system. The next few weeks will be required for data collection. In April the future state will be mapped to improve the system.

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Budget Day!

Today is Budget Day!

This means everyone is busy attending briefings and of course preparing for the big unveiling this afternoon. Throughout my internship I have been able to sit in on the budget meetings within the Ministry and have been to almost all of the Health presentations to Treasury Board. Treasury Board is probably one of the most mysterious entities within government I'd have to say! 

It has been pretty neat to see how the budget process works first hand. I will be going to the legislative building this afternoon the see the unveiling up close haha

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Connecting the Dots Presentation

As I think I've mentioned in a previous post, I was preparing a presentation for Connecting the Dots. Connecting the Dots is a health system-wide meeting that is intended to get everyone (CEO's, Ministry etc.) on the same page concerning certain issues within the health system and suggest areas of improvement. In the past, this meeting has discussed significant issues such as surgical and rural healthcare. 

A couple of Thursdays ago I ended up presenting the PowerPoint on health system priorities I had created at Connecting the Dots. The Deputy Minister also allowed me to answer questions afterwards. There were some tough questions, but I think everything went smoothly!

It was one of my biggest public speaking events, which made me quite nervous - but by the time questions came around I think I had found my groove.

I’ve really enjoyed my internship here at Health, because it has given me a lot of cool opportunities that I would not normally experience.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

What I am working on this week

This week I am busy working on/completing a lot of policy work.
  • I am finishing up work on a policy piece I have been working on since November
    • This is a policy that involves safety proceedures for certain types of medical instruments
  • Tomorrow I will be attending a briefing note training session as research for my briefing note Lean process
    • I want to see if this training is adequate and can be offered to all new staff tasked with writing briefing notes
    • This action would be consistent with the results I received from the briefing note survey I created that overwhelmingly indicated that Executive Director's would support briefing note training for new employees
  • I am making a power-point presentation on health system priorities for Connecting the Dots, which is a health system-wide discussion/planning forum
  • I'm also working on some research for the Saskatchewan Surgical Initiative
I am busy, busy, busy!

Monday, February 14, 2011

Cancer Agency Tour

Last week, the Deputy Minister and I went to the Cancer Agency for a visit. We attended their senior leadership team meeting, and chatted with the CEO, Chair and Vice-Chair of the Agency.

We mainly talked about their preventative screening programs. One of their programs in particular has been very successful in the pilot phase and is set to expand. The earlier cancer is detected, the better the outcomes will be for the patient.

I think my favourite part of the internship is going out into the community and listening to health providers and patients. Listening to their concerns as well as what pleases them is invaluable when creating policy.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Briefing Note Lean

I have been working a lot on the briefing note Lean project lately and thought I would post our progress:
  • "BN Requested" in email headers has been utilized as a means to clearly and quickly identify requests to writers
  • Paper requests for briefing notes have been eliminated - all requests will be made electronically
  • Paper approvals have been eliminated by 75% - now only one final package of the briefing note needs to be sent to the Deputy Minister's Office.
    • Prior to this paper packages were also sent to the Minister's Office, Communications Branch, and the branch that initiated the note - now, they all get a notification electronically of final approval
    • Under the old system if a note was rejected and sent back for rework new packages needed to be created, which wasted a lot of time, effort, and paper. 
  • Tracking of briefing notes from the three branches with the most over-due briefing notes has been undertaken to give us better insight into hold-ups
  • A survey was sent out to the Assistant Deputy Ministers and Executive Directors asking them to identify problems with the briefing note process in terms of timeliness and quality of notes.
We are also considering utilizing a fully electronic process from request to final approval for the briefing notes. Right now the system is paper based, which isn't very helpful if you want to track where a briefing note is in the process!