Smileyota Way

At Smiley’s, we strive to equip our residents with the skills to practice in today’s health care system while being readily adaptable to its ever-changing landscape.  Our practice management curriculum goes beyond the classroom and into current clinic operations. We invite all residents to participate in our weekly operations meetings to lend their input as we evaluate and improve our processes. 

 The Smileyota Way
Tim Ramer, MD, Interim Program Director and Patient Care Director

Patient First. Remove the Blame. Make It Visible. Make It Better. Make It Fun!

The Smileyota Way is based on both Toyota’s production system and lean manufacturing and our own experience. It is a way to approach our daily work with our long term goals and our culture of quality in mind. So whether we are scheduling an appointment, interviewing a patient, giving an immunization or submitting a bill, we want to remember the following five principles of the Smileyota way. This is our evolving philosophy...

Put the Patient First: Approach every problem with the question "How does this improve the patient's life?"  If it doesn't directly or indirectly benefit the patient, why are we doing it?

Remove the Blame: An error is never one person's fault; it’s usually the result of a flawed process. If we remove the blame, we will be more likely to "make it visible."

Make It Visible: Seek out and expose problems. Be intolerant of dysfunctional systems, but tolerant of the people that work in them. If things don't go well, let someone know; if something is broken, write it down. If it is visible, we can improve it.

Make It Better: To improve a process for patients, staff, and providers, you need to understand the root cause of the problem. Find its origin by asking “Why?” at least five times. Involve all who touch the process in the analysis and improvement of it. Make decisions slowly and implement change rapidly.

Make It Fun: From the picnic to Halloween to laughter-filled staff meetings, Smiley’s has a long tradition of "making it fun."  It is one of the things that makes Smiley’s a special place to work.