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LEAN Healthcare
What can
hospitals learn from the manufacturing industry? In a recent Wall
Street Journal article, Dr. Don Berwick,
a Harvard Medical School faculty member, questions the status quo and
calls for hospital re-engineering using process improvement methods that
the manufacturing industry have been using and perfecting for
decades.
Hospitals in
the UK have been putting these healthcare process improvement practices
into use since 1998 when the
National Health Service decided to reduce patient waiting times for
surgery and outpatient clinic visits. Their experience has been very
positive.
Hospitals today are faced with multiple pressures:
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Increasing loads |
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Increasing operating costs |
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Shortage of qualified healthcare staff |
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Limited hospital facilities |
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Increased discriminating and demanding
customers |
Under these conditions, hospitals have
developed extensive experience at implementing cost cutting campaigns to
maintain profitability. While these efforts have made a difference,
profit margins continue to shrink from year to year.
Our approach in working with Healthcare
organizations is not unlike our approach with any organzation. We
capitalize on the perfections of LEAN techniques to improve productivity, eliminate waste,
improve the quality of their products, and lower manufacturing costs.
What we learn we apply to our practice to deliver the best service to our
clients.
Our Approach to Healthcare Improvement
has helped many healthcare clients improve their productivity, quality,
safety and service to their patients.
The objective is not to turn healthcare
organizations into manufacturing organizations. Both are very
different with very different objectives. However, there is much
that can be applied from the LEAN experience of manufacturing to any
organization ... including healthcare. We help healthcare clients
increase their throughput, shorten waiting times, reduce operating costs
and improve quality of workmanship and service delivery to patients and
internal customers.
Basic principles of Lean Manufacturing
and Lean Healthcare are:
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Add only value (eliminate waste)
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Concentrate on performing value-added
activities (eliminate non-value-added)
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Respond to customer demand (pull
system)
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Optimize across the organization
(cross-funcational collaboration)
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Paper - The Human Side of LEAN Healthcare
Is LEAN Healthcare right for
you?
Lean
healthcare is one of several process improvement methodologies that can
benefit hospitals and healthcare organizations.
Six Sigma and
Constraint Management
are also valuable techniques. We like to focus on your unique
situation and then choose the methodology or combination of methodologies
that can best bring about your desired outcomes.
The next
step?
Contact ATX to
schedule an informative consultation.
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