Associate Blog | Intern Group Project

By: Lauren Kirchberg

In May, The Resource Group highlighted our Summer 2023 intern class and provided an overview of the intern experience. As we near the end of the 2023 internship experience we would like to highlight all the incredible work our interns have completed, specifically across all five group projects. Read more below!

Clinical Equipment Rental Request Process

Project Sponsor: John Cooney, John Walker
Project Leads: Brendon De Boer, Edward Chabarria, Benjamin Frederick
Project Team: Gabriella Anaya, Turner Cook, Renee Muthakana, Matt Reisman, Mena Tausner

Utilizing rental equipment can be a great way to reduce healthcare costs; however, renting can be a complicated process with added expenses. Through the Clinical Equipment Rental Request Process project, interns analyzed the current state of Ascension's rental expenses and processes. In addition, they created a playbook for clinical staff to request short term rentals and identified excess rental equipment located across our facilities.  Finally, the interns recommended a system wide process for rental intake, rental aged reporting, and return criteria.

Milestones
  • Identify 18 months of complete Ascension rental spend
  • Identify top rental vendors outside of historical rental scope of work
  • Create a Tableau dashboard to track rental account spend across Ascension and rental vendor specific details

Goals
  • Develop a Tableau dashboard to have stakeholders review rental spend
  • Research and recommend a rental equipment process

Skills Developed
  • Data Analytics: Through the use of Excel/Google Sheets to analyze rental expenses
  • Tableau: Through the creation of a dashboard for stakeholders in rental spend
  • Communications: Through interaction and outreach with vendors

Data Management and Documentation

Project Sponsor: Nick Criswell
Project Leads: Nick Criswell, Shazia Nooruddin
Project Team: Pooja Sigdel, Partho Das, Rahim Moxey, Sam Akande, Selma Mekias, Ellie Holt

For any organization to run effectively they need to have reliable and easily accessible data. In order to ensure our data is reliable, our intern group collaborated with Data Action to create a series of tools/alerts to flag data inaccuracies and ingestion failures. Through the use of Tableau, interns developed push alerts which are sent to the owners of each data source to more proactively address and resolve data issues. In addition, this project improved data documentation through the creation of data dictionaries for key data sources to help associates effectively use and understand data informatics. 

Milestones
  • Research of key elements for data documentation and BigQuery information schema
  • Inventory of existing BigQuery resources
  • Create data documentation templates
  • Develop push notifications for Tableau dashboards

Goals
  • Build a Tableau Dashboard to help monitor data ingestions
  • Design a data dictionary for key data sources that explains BigQuery tables, columns, and views
  • Complete background documents for key data sources to provide a narrative for users

Skills Developed
  • SQL: Through applying SQL code to enhance data documentation
  • Tableau: Through the creation of a dashboard to monitor data ingestions
  • Project Management: Through the research, planning, and implementation of resources

Diverse Supplier Audit

Project Sponsor: Chase Osborn
Project Leads: Dejah Hilliard, Sydney Smith
Project Team: Taylor Louviere, Robby Isaacs, Arjun Natarajan, Aanchal Sharma

The Resource Group is committed to supporting the growth and development of minority-, veteran-, and women-owned businesses and small businesses by tracking, evaluating, and maintaining our Supplier Diversity results for continuous growth and improvement. This project assessed and improved diverse supplier documentation to provide more accurate foundational knowledge on The Resource Group's supplier base. 

Milestones
  • Develop internal requirements for diversity certifications
  • Brainstorm and develop a new process for collecting supplier diversity data
  • Audit and update current supplier diversity data in Novatus
Goals
  • Improve the process to collect and store diverse supplier certifications
  • Support increased supplier diversity data accuracy and reporting  

Skills Developed
  • Project Management: Through the development and implementation of a project plan
  • Process Improvement: Through the development of a new written process for collecting and storing certifications
  • Communications: Through supplier engagement and interaction

Sterile Processing Classroom Dashboard

Project Sponsor: Jania Torreblanca
Project Leads: Elizabeth Connors, MK Parrott, Celine Lawson
Project Team: Parker Thompson, Kevin Dulion, Grace Lindstrom

The improvement of Sterile Processing is a top priority for The Resource Group. Through this project, interns created a Tableau Dashboard to display registration, completion, and quiz response data for a Sterile Processing training and education courses. Tracking this information is essential to the business function provided by Sterile Processing and having data around education and certification status by associates assists the facilities in ensuring requirements and standards are met and maintained. 

Milestones
  • Create three tracking dashboards for different educational areas
  • Merge dashboards into one central location for easy access
  • Provide education to stakeholders on dashboard use and nuances

Goals
  • Provide a navigational hub for course information
  • Provide national and facility-level insight into course registration and completion data
  • Provide national and facility-level insight into areas of opportunity

Skills Developed
  • Analytics: Through the reorganization and cleaning of existing data sets and creation of Tableau dashboards
  • Communications: Through collaboration in a virtual environment to achieve a mutual goal, and through virtual presentations to key stakeholders

Sustainability Process Review

Project Sponsor: Chase Osborn
Project Leads: Tom Kalla, Ken Farris
Project Team: Yushun Ding, Ella Ducato, Madi Robinson, Luke Blair

At The Resource Group, we are always looking for ways to support Ascension's sustainability goals. This intern group project  did just that through the research and gathering of sustainable attributes to support contracting efforts. Interns reviewed sustainability disciplines across contract categories to create assessment standards during the contracting process. Through industry standards and research the interns helped increase The Resource Group sustainable attributes repository.

Milestones
  • Identify sustainable attributes by supplier and contract category
  • Compile and develop a sustainable attributes portfolio for contracting
  • Educate stakeholders on project outcomes and resources

Goals
  • Research and gather materials on category specific sustainability attributes 
  • Support the research of sustainable attributes in materials and services impacting patients and end-users
  • Develop and share results with Contract Design and Sourcing

Skills Developed
  • Healthcare Knowledge: Through research on suppliers and sustainability practices
  • Industry Experience: Through collaboration with Contract Design and Sourcing to understand The Resource Group's supply chain contracting and end-user decision making process