Associate Faculty in Operations

Lana Wietholter says improvement and coaching is in her DNA. An industrial engineer with leadership experience of over 28 years at Frito-Lay, Inc. and Eli Lilly & Company, Wietholter’s leadership roles span from research and sales human resources to manufacturing and marketing direct accountability. Wietholter says her goal as an instructor is to give physicians a practical and proven approach to leading change in healthcare.

“Whether physicians want change that impacts their day-to-day or something larger, they can do it.  My course offers a practical approach and proven techniques to achieve sustainable change,” she says.

Wietholter encourages physicians to pursue questions such as whether patients are receiving the best experience, whether the organization has the sponsorship and resources needed for sustainable change. How does leadership select the right projects to create recognized results?

“These are questions leaders asks when things need to work better, ” she explains. “There are real answers to those questions, and if you’re using proven improvement principles, you can become a better sponsor to your organization and achieve results.”

Wietholter is an associate faculty member in the Business of Medicine Physician Executive MBA Program. She is leading the second-year course on business process improvement for healthcare executives, and her first cohort of physicians were able to achieve remarkable results.

 “In a recent project, a physician MBA team ensured the survival of a multi-state child vaccination program for 14,000 children while retaining revenue,” she says. “After identifying the regulatory requirements, patient needs, staff duties and concerns, the team unlocked the source of the errors and met the standard of zero defects. The physician who worked at this organization, as well as her MBA and on-site teams, had to demonstrate these results quickly, and without the benefit of updating technology.” 

Throughout the course, physician teams identified real-world projects and created revenue savings, improved patient satisfaction, decreased hospital times for key services, eliminated hundreds of non-value added steps performed by patients and staff and improved employee satisfaction.