An excerpt from Perfecting Patient Journeys: Improving patient safety, quality, and satifaction while building problem-solving skills

Chapter 1
Team-Based Problem Solving and Learning for Continuous Improvement

 

The Need to Improve Patient Journeys in Healthcare

Imagine that you have been invited to tour the Emergency Department (ED) of St. Luke’s Hospital. As you enter you see about 30 people, some sitting in chairs and some standing. You learn that some are waiting to go into the ED, others are waiting for triage, and the rest are family members of those seeking treatment. A few patients, you are told, have been waiting for seven hours to see a doctor. One patient gasps for breath, prompting another person to run to the triage area for help, which finally arrives. Around the corner you see a group clustered at registration, where there is no privacy for a young woman who is crying and trying to explain why she needs to be seen. ...

Read all of Chapter 1 from Perfecting Patient Journeys

Perfecting Patient Journeys is a guide to value-stream improvement for leaders of healthcare organizations who want to implement lean thinking and engage employees in solving problems in order to deliver better and more efficient care. Readers will learn how to identify and select a problem in the performance of a value stream, define a project scope, and create a shared understanding of what's occurring in the value stream. Readers will also learn to develop a shared vision of an improved future, and hopefully work together to make that vision a reality.

Mary Kingston, Vice President for Performance Improvement at St. Joseph’s Hospital, talks about the first three years of the lean journey at St. Joseph's in California. She is interviewed (available in audio and text format) by the Association for Manufacturing Excellence in advance of their November conference, where St. Joseph's will be presenting.

From the interview:

"One of the things I thought was really intriguing was the whole idea of capturing knowledge which I really hadn't thought about. We use A3 Thinking and our last box is called insights. What I've learned through this conference is that we've been very superficial about looking at those insights and we really want to look a level deeper: Like where are we failing? Why did we fail? How can we understand how to prevent that from happening again? And I think sometimes we look at the insights a little too superficially. So that deeper dialogue is what I'm taking away."

St. Joseph's is a member of the Healthcare Value Leaders Network.

The Toyota Production System "house" shows the elements of a lean system. Source: Lean Lexicon.

5S improvements to eliminate trip hazards and to improve the storage of cockpit windows at the FedEx LAX maintenance and repair facility are shown as part of the LEI success story, Lean Thinking in Aircraft Repair and Maintenance Takes Wing at Fedex Express. (Photos courtesy of Fedex LAX.)

5S improvements to the storage of panels and carts at the FedEx LAX maintenance and repair facility are shown as part of the LEI success story, Lean Thinking in Aircraft Repair and Maintenance Takes Wing at Fedex Express. (Photos courtesy of Fedex LAX.)

A tool to help check thrust reversers and a cart for transporting decking are shown as part of a 5S effort at the FedEx LAX maintenance and repair facility. The photos are part of the LEI success story, Lean Thinking in Aircraft Repair and Maintenance Takes Wing at Fedex Express. (Photos courtesy of Fedex LAX.)

Akron Children's Hospital was considering a $3.6 million capital project to keep pace with demand for clean surgical instruments. But during a five-day kaizen event, staff members developed simple and less expensive alternatives by analyzing the way instruments were cleaned, sterilized, and delivered to surgery. The kaizen project boosted capacity from to 16,000 operations annually, up from 13,000 procedures. (Published by the Akron Beacon Journal.)

A machine builder and several suppliers explain how lean transformations have benefitted their businesses. Along the way you'll get a brief introduction into the basics of lean and how some of the concepts work. (Published online by Control Design.)