Healthcare costs and coverage are top statewide economic and social concerns:
- Insurance premiums for families increased 136% from 1996-2005.
- 17% of the population was uninsured in 2005-2006.
SCMEP’s South Carolina manufacturing clients cite rising healthcare costs as their number one complaint.
In response, SCMEP is positioned to help improve productivity and bottom-line results in the 90 hospitals and other healthcare providers throughout the state utilizing a unique program which harnesses the successful practices of Lean manufacturing, the Toyota Production System and Lean Healthcare West©.
Benefits:
- Improved performance to patient safety goals
- Improved productivity
- Increased patient and employee satisfaction
- Consistent delivery of high quality care
- Improved financial returns
- Both manufacturing and healthcare have a work flow - a series of steps - processes that frequently contain waste, break down, and cause delay.
- As different as they are, both industries require these processes to produce an outcome; it could be a new automobile or a healthier patient, a load of steel or a lab report.
- Lean improves outcomes by streamlining processes to reduce waste, eliminate breakdowns, and shorten wait times.
Using the primary TPS tools of Value Stream Mapping and A3 problem solving, healthcare workers learn to explore problems first-hand to find root causes and eliminate these non-value-added activities:
- Waiting
- Confusion
- Non-value-added processing
- Excess inventory
- Defects
- Excess motion
- Underutilizing people’s Knowledge, Skills and Abilities
The Lean Healthcare South Carolina program provides caregivers with a powerful but compassionate approach to solve problems and make improvements as they work to achieve the “IDEAL”:
- Exactly what the patient needs, defect-free
- One by one, customized to each individual patient
- On demand, exactly as requested
- Immediate response to problems or changes
- No waste
- Safe for patients, staff and clinicians - physically, emotionally and professionally
The foundation of Lean Healthcare South Carolina is the reVIEW© program created by Lean Healthcare West©. Cindy Jimmerson, with a 30 year background as a trauma system developer and emergency healthcare provider, is the founder and President of Lean Healthcare West©, which consists of healthcare and industry professionals offering education and implementation of lean principles and the Toyota Production System (TPS).
Back to topreVIEW© realizing exceptional VALUE IN EVERYDAY WORK
Developed by experienced healthcare professionals at Lean Healthcare West©, reVIEW© is a comprehensive 8-session (18 total hours) training program that teaches participants to use Toyota Production System (TPS) principles to solve problems and improve processes. By applying these principles, including Value Stream Mapping and A3 problem solving, participants will look at work differently and begin to identify potential savings of time and resources and eliminate errors. Building on the 8-week course, a train-the-trainer program is also available that prepares and certifies in-house coaches to become in-house instructors. This enables them to then teach the course to other staff members in their organizations.
At the program’s conclusion, participants will be comfortable with and skilled in using the
philosophies and tools of TPS for problem solving in the course of work, and the in-house coaches will be able to assist them with implementation. Specifically, they will be able to:
- Define IDEAL, and recognize when their organization’s outcome is not IDEAL.
- See patient care and supporting systems as processes.
- Create a quantified “map” of a process, and use the data to determine process performance measures.
- Create a future map of flow of processes that is a visualized improvement over the current state map.
- Diagnose a workplace “problem” by seeking out root causes in terms of activity specification, requests and pathways.
reVIEW© has a proven track record of generating process improvements and bottom-line results, and is customizable to meet the individual needs of hospitals, long-term care facilities, physician office practices, and clinics.
SCMEP is the exclusive provider of Lean Healthcare West© in South Carolina.
SCMEP’s Lean Healthcare South Carolina services also feature 5S Workplace Organization, Kaizen, and many other proven lean techniques.
Melanie Sudduth is one of SCMEP’s certified instructors of Lean Healthcare West© and is the Director of Lean Healthcare South Carolina. She can be reached at SCMEP’s Columbia office (864) 354-4773 or by e-mail:
SCMEP will provide a Lean Assessment free of charge to healthcare provider partners as an initial step in the lean healthcare process.
TWI - Training Within Industry for Healthcare
Training Within Industry program allows healthcare facilities to quickly and effectively tackle situations where the status quo is no longer acceptable. TWI consists of three core programs modules (Job Instruction, Job Relations & Job methods) and that feature a proven four-step methodology of Preparation, Presentation, Application and Testing. This methodology ensures that each program is simple, straight-forward and easy to implement. Participants are given the opportunity to practice the four-step method and "learn by doing" in a confidential, low-stress, and supportive environment. Learn more
Case Study
The following is a case study of a successful Lean Healthcare South Carolina implementation in a South Carolina hospital in 2006.
Problem: Patients were having extended waiting times for surgery.
Action: A visual scheduling system was developed by users at the surgeon’s office
and the hospital to improve patient wait times and surgeon utilization in a four-room OR.
Results: Surgery times were more predictable. Annualized savings of $40,000 in OR overtime was realized. Employee satisfaction improved by reducing unplanned overtime. A projected 10-20% increase in revenue from surgery was enabled without a significant increase in costs by more efficiently using existing assets.
Problem: Patients experiencing long wait times in ER
Action: Physicians and nurses worked to increase flow through the ER by improving bed utilization and patient registration.
Results: The hospital broke the “1,000 patients treated in the ER per month” barrier, a 17% increase. Overall financial impact was positive as fixed costs were absorbed to a greater degree across a larger number of patients. ER Press-Gainey scores indicated increased patient satisfaction. Synergies and a culture of improvement resulted from project efforts.
“The Lean Healthcare South Carolina program has greatly enhanced our performance improvement and customer satisfaction initiatives. Our tremendous success thus far, as well as our knowledge and strength going forward, would not have been possible without SCMEP.”
-Hospital Administrator
