SAVE Award 2011 Ideas

Pre-holidays are particularly problematic for traffic in DC and many other areas. This means that in the days just before holidays traffic can be especially slow, resulting in more carbon emissions/ global warming/ heating/ wasted time, etc.
Historical data could be used to determine which days staggering of work hours would be most useful. If tmay be that post-holiday traffic is as problematic, or moreso.
Staggering... more »

Every new mandatory training further saps the workforce productivity, and indiscriminately wastes more and more total effort. It is far too easy to make a training "mandatory," and too tempting by their creators to make them overly burdensome. For several years now, annual IT security training for anyone with a computer in HHS has required completion of 15 individual modules. There have been mandatory trainings in 508... more »

Intelligently reducing the number of time-accounting systems should reduce the amount of time spent on non productive activities.

On average, employees in my work unit spent .25 hour per day /1.25 per week accounting for their time. The result is ~65 hours per work-year spent on administrative functions not attributed to normal job duties. (This does not include the additional time spent completing paper Time and... more »

Last year I got a Smart ID which I would be able to track my time and have access to my computer. Why issue them to employees if the system is not ready yet? Give us the cards when we are ready to use them it is a waste of time and money to issue these cards if it is unknown if we are going to use them

Is there an industry that governs? Can we really have an "acceptable" mortality rate? Can we have universal mandates and then complain about underachievement? No, unless we write off portions of the population. Business should be about profit. Governance is not. Wealth and well being, securities and security are apples and oranges.

So many studies, charts, metrics, and training is geared to applying practices that... more »

Creating an Urgent Care Clinic that is open 12 hrs daily, regardless of whether a veteran has a primary care Dr. or is unassigned a primary care Dr., would offer help in the the problems of sending pt's back and forth from the ER to the PACTS within each facilty in each VISN. Not every Visn has this option. Our hospital would benefit greatly in many ways including;less frustration for vets,fewer walk ins in the clinics,... more »