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About Us
Based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Blue Cottage Consulting is an independent, woman-owned healthcare consulting firm specializing in visioning, strategy, operations, and facility planning (programming, design review, transition and activation planning).

Blue Cottage Consulting is different - we have vision, knowledge, experience, and a point of view. Our professionals have held executive and management positions at some of the best medical centers in the country. Most importantly, we seek projects and clients that want to transform healthcare.
 
Cottages are about relationships, respite, and reflection. Blue Cottage Consulting is about creating a space for our clients to think, dream, and truly see the ocean of possibilities that exist for any given project. We coach leaders to embrace the possibilities, balance real versus perceived risk, and articulate a bold strategic vision – in other words, Be Transformational.  We get to know you, we work alongside you, and we create an intimacy in our partnership that fosters honesty, challenge, and innovation. It is an exercise that brings out the best in you and your team so that together, we can discover breakthrough solutions with practical implementation, explore global concepts with local applicability, and clearly articulate what success looks like and how we are going to get there.
 
Our consulting professionals challenge the status quo by applying lean efficiency standards to reduce waste, achieve mind-blowing operational innovations, and create an environment where clinical teams can achieve their full potential. We combine robust analytic tools and performance-driven measurement metrics, with real-world experience and active listening techniques to allow both data and people to guide each project to its highest probability of success. Our capabilities come from graduate training in healthcare management, nursing, planning, and architecture, as well as certification and professional training in special skills such as lean operations, six sigma, and executive coaching.
 
We are Blue Cottage Consulting and we are working to transform healthcare one project at a time.
ABOUT US

Posts Tagged ‘research’

First Impressions - New intern Catherine Mouch reflects on her first weeks at Blue Cottage

Tuesday, July 17th, 2012 by Catherine Mouch

Having recently become a Blue Cottage employee, I must say that I love this place. The people and environment here are unlike any other place I’ve worked. Everyone is relaxed, helpful and just plain nice. I felt very welcomed and at home from the first few minutes of being in the Ann Arbor office, even if I did get lost downtown and there was a search party sent out after me.

I had talked to Juliet a few times about securing this opportunity, but as we all know she is quite busy. I had some vague impression that I would be doing a research project that she had thought up specifically to keep me busy. I think her exact quote was “let’s combine math, healthcare and social justice.”

Little did I know that I would essentially take over as secretary, junior accountant, trip coordinator, and general research assistant. I am amazed at how much respect and responsibility the team has given to me. I am so glad to be contributing meaningfully to the company and, in my own small way, to the state of healthcare in North America.

This first week, I was flying solo. Shelby, the administrative assistant who was one of the original employees at Blue Cottage, moved on to new opportunities and has left with some big shoes to fill. My office mates, Andy and Dawn are of course always willing to help, but I am trying to be as self-sufficient as possible.

Even though I’ve only been employed here at Blue Cottage for a matter of weeks, I have already learned so much. I have gained an understanding of basic accounting and how to use the software; learned how to operate in an office setting; and I am being exposed to the healthcare industry as a whole. My research has been utilized in client presentations and processed invoices. Oh, I have also discovered all of the good places to eat in Dallas, without ever having been there!  I’m definitely hitting-up the Rusty Taco when in Texas.

Catherine Mouch is a Healthcare Intern at Blue Cottage Consulting.

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Is Evidence-based Design an all or nothing process?

Tuesday, April 12th, 2011 by Julie Kent

As a founding member of the EDAC (Evidence-based Design Accreditation and Certification) program, with The Center for Health Design, I’ve been involved with countless conversations about “How to conduct evidence-based design.”  The mission of the EDAC program is to develop a community of accredited industry professionals who have knowledge about an evidence-based design process, but not to educate all these professionals into trained researchers. Which leads to my question: “Is Evidence-based Design an all or nothing process?”

There are two parts to the evidence-based design process as outlined by the EDAC program.

Existing Evidence: Identifying and using available and credible research to inform design.

New Evidence: Hypothesize, gather data and measure results to share with the design industry.

In a survey conducted earlier this year, nearly all respondents identified that they are using “available best evidence” to inform their healthcare planning, design, and decision-making process.  The majority of respondents noted that they are linking the “evidence” they’ve found to specific design interventions that are aimed at improved safety, operational efficiency, and user experience. On the reverse side, once the questions reached the “create new evidence” tipping point, few respondents answered “yes” to creating a research hypothesis or collecting and analyzing post-occupancy data.

So, back to the question at hand: “If I don’t complete the entire eight steps of the EDAC evidence-based design process are you really doing evidence-based design?”

My answer, along with many of my EDAC peers is “YES!”

Evidence-based Design is not an ALL or NOTHING exercise. How much or how little EBD work is done on a particular project will be directly dependent on how much or how little there is of a lot of other things, such as project type, time, money, leadership commitment, interdisciplinary team, etc.

So, if you’re like the young architect I coached during the EBD Process Improvement Workshop at the HEALTHCARE DESIGN.10 conference, who is unsure about how EBD “fits” in Critical Access Hospital projects, perhaps this will help:

Finding and applying “credible research” to your project, even when it validates your experiential knowledge, adds depth to the decision-making process.

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