Industrial Engineering Technology alumna, hospital VP helps improve patient care

With her IET degree, she makes a difference in the lives of patients and hospital employees alike.

Industrial Engineering Technology practices are core to what Elaine McCracken does as Assistant Vice President of Operational Quality and Performance at Saint Anthony Medical Center in Crown Point.

Though she had put baccalaureate degrees in biology (1985) and medical technology (1986) that she had earned at Purdue University Calumet to good use early in her health care career, "I saw that there were things that could be done differently (more efficiently), but I wasn't in a position to make the changes," she said.

The more she researched, the more she discovered that hospitals utilize Management Engineers to make such changes, and that Management Engineers have educational backgrounds in Industrial Engineering or Industrial Engineering Technology (IET).

That motivated her to pursue a degree in IET, which she earned at Purdue Calumet in 1992, and later, an MBA. Initially, she applied her IET degree as a Process Improvement Education Specialist, Manager of Management Engineering, Director of Management Engineering and as an Internal Operations Consultant. She says she enjoys her current job, because she makes a difference in the lives of patients and hospital employees alike.

"I am involved facilitating teams that improve patient care through monitoring patient outcomes and process improvement initiatives," she said. "For example, in the Emergency Department, we looked at the length of stay of our patients and identified strategies to reduce this time so they don't have to wait as long to get treatment."

Concerning her Purdue Calumet education, she said, "It was important that I was able to receive a degree from a quality school that is nationally recognized. Also, the professors that I had were very hands-on. They were quality mentors with high integrity…(They taught) beyond what was in the books. I think this helped me to translate the traditional manufacturing model that was taught to IETs and impose it on the healthcare system.

"Understanding that healthcare is a 'people's place' as opposed to a machine-oriented environment is key in taking industrial engineering principles and using them to make process improvements in hospitals."