Quality Support Services

    Business Process Improvement

A case study of

Using Lean and Six Sigma Tools to Enhance Hospital Operations

David O'Koren - Senior Consultant /Project Masters Inc.

As the cost of healthcare continues to rise faster than other products and services, healthcare providers and especially hospitals are under pressure to reduce costs or at least control the rate of price increases. Traditionally, hospitals have accomplished these savings by making more procedures as out-patient services or by reducing non-critical patient services. But for many hospitals this hasn’t been enough and the list of ideas on what to do next is short.

• What if there was a way to reduce costs while actually increasing patient satisfaction?
• What if there was a way to provide a higher level of healthcare with the same staff, yet the staff actually enjoys their jobs more?
• What if you could do this all while maintaining your already high level of quality healthcare service?

Project Masters has experience in helping hospitals just like yours to accomplish these results by applying the principles of Lean Healthcare Systems. Working in process such as the Emergency Department, Surgery, Laboratory Services, Nutritional Services, Patient Financial Services and others, we can help you increase patient satisfaction, increase employee satisfaction, reduce costs, provide faster service, and reduce the possibility of errors. Call us today to learn more.

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Lean HealthCare Systems at Hospitals can Impact:

Laboratory Services	Reduce labor costs Improve productivity up to 50% Decrease the amount of space needed up to 50 %
Surgery	Increase Operating Room utilization Decrease time between procedures Reduce costs of running the operating Room Lower inventory of tools and supplies
Nutritional Services	Reduce labor cost Decrease errors Improve Patient Satisfaction Minimize waste and inventory Improve Employee Morale
Radiology
Emergency Department	Increase Patient Satisfaction from below the 10th percentile to over the 75th percentile. Slash out-patient Length of Stay up to 50% Drastically improve time to treatment
Pharmacy
Healthcare Professionals
Administrative Processes
Transport Services

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Project Masters is helping hospitals improve the care they provide with Lean HealthCare Systems

Laboratory Services	Laboratory Services is critical to providing premium healthcare.  The results must be accurate and returned quickly.  Point-of-care testing has reduced time to result on some tests, but others still take hours or days to get results from the lab.  Some have blamed the long incubation times for some tests as the cause.  But after applying the principles of Lean Healthcare Systems,  hospitals have been able to reduce Time-to-Result up to 50% without adding staff, space, or equipment.
Surgery	Operating Rooms are an expensive piece of floor space, but they are also one of the largest contributors to the hospital's revenues.  The more operations that can be done in each room, the better the revenues for the hospital.  Lean Healthcare Systems can help you reduce the time it takes to turn-over an Operating Room between procedures and reduces the cost of running and maintaining the Operating Rooms.
Nutritional Services	Nutritional Services are treated like second class citizen in some hospitals.  Everyone recognizes that the hospital has to serve food for patients, visitors and staff, but Nutritional Services typically doesn't get the same respect as Surgery, the Emergency Department, or other patient care areas.  From the patient's perspective it is one of the most important services the hospital provides and one of the services that gets the most complaints.  Hospital food gets lower ratings than fast food and about the same ratings as airline food.  Could this be affecting your hospital's patient satisfaction scores?  Let Lean Healthcare Systems help you to provide hot, fresh meals that cost even less.
Emergency Department	Does your Emergency Department's patient satisfaction initiatives amount to giving out more warm blankets or meal coupons to help the patient struggle through the long wait.  The Lean Healthcare system doesn't just try to reduce the symptoms of poor patient satisfaction, it attacks the reasons the patients have to wait in the first place.
Healthcare Professionals	Healthcare professionals are in short supply.  Attracting the best doctors and nurses can be difficult and keeping them happy once you've hired them is even harder. They have to deal with sick patients who are annoyed because they had to wait for hours to see the doctor. They long for a workplace where the patients appreciate their efforts.    They spend most of their time calming down the patient instead of actually treating the patient.  The doctors and nurses want to get back to being healthcare providers again.  Lean Healthcare Systems gets them back into what they love doing and reduces the time they spend with disgruntled patients all without adding staffing census.
Administrative Processes	Poor Administrative Processes can infuriate your patients as much as poor healthcare.  Each interaction with the patient is an opportunity to delight them . Or chance to upset them further.  Lean Healthcare Systems can improve the speed and accuracy of  your hospital's administrative processes to make  each patient interaction build a more positive patient experience.

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