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QI—The Manager
A Newcomer’s Perspective

Jeanne Semura

When I first arrived on campus eight weeks ago, I felt very fortunate to be joining such an enlightened organization. Here was a place that embraced and understood the value and true meaning of continuous quality improvement. Nowhere else in my quality management experience had there been an action-based commitment to building knowledge workers; workers equipping themselves to compete in the global labor market in the way work is done.

As the weeks flew by, I found myself immersed in several new initiatives, including: the Accounts Payable Customer Service Improvement Project, the Global Support Project, more recently the Non-Resident Alien Project Team, and the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) – Refresh Project. I’m serving as facilitator for these projects, with additional responsibility for staffing the BSC Project.

I’ve also joined several on-going quality improvement (QI) teams: The Dashboard Team, Inciters Team, Executive Improvement Team, and New Directions Team. It’s been fun working with such hard working teams, committed to making things work better for their colleagues, customers, and ultimately the faculty, researchers, and students at the University of Washington.

When the QI movement emerged in the health care sector in the early 1990s, I was among a fortunate handful of people selected to receive training on QI methods and tools at the Institute for Health Care Improvement in Boston. The lead instructor was Dr. Donald Berwick, recognized today as the most influential physician in quality improvement in the county. As a senior analyst, I worked to integrate quality knowledge, practice, and culture for the largest managed care organization in the state. The work included QI training, facilitating multi-disciplinary improvement teams, measuring and analyzing process performance and documenting improvements to meet national quality accreditation standards. Since then, I’ve served as a project and process manager in utilization management, manager of quality program staff at the largest health care insurer in the state, a director of health care services for the largest Medicaid managed care organization in the state, and most recently, manager for managed care quality for the state’s Medicaid program.

My connection to higher education stems from years of learning and research, as a UW doctoral student in higher education administration. My focus was on decision-making in complex, changing organizations and the effects on managerial jobs.

As a true believer in continuous personal improvement, I’ve continued to pursue learning opportunities not only in quality tools and methods, but also in better understanding how individuals and complex organizations learn, create new ideas, measure performance and diffuse innovations. I am eager to learn how I can best assist you in reaching your strategic goals and direction.