Healthcare reform is headline news, and the subject dominates business and personal conversations, debates within the legislature, as well as healthcare provider mandates. Recent Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) rulings, current economic conditions and the Obama administration’s advocacy for healthcare reform are forcing hospitals to change in order to survive, let alone thrive in the 21st century. The terms waste reduction, quality, accountability, pay-for-performance, evidence-based medicine, modernization/automation, workflow optimization, core measure improvement and transparency reflect the consistency of theme and need for the adoption of Lean Healthcare Strategies for lean times.
Whether consciously or not, the new administration and healthcare reform advocates are embracing the tenets of the Toyota Production System (aka TPS) or Lean Healthcare approach to helping hospitals to minimize waste, optimize performance, profitability, employee engagement and, ultimately, improve patient outcomes.
As hospitals now face financial challenges and major cutbacks to survive during this economic crisis, many feel forced to cut valuable staff, services and entire programs. Each of the nation's 5,700 hospitals must cut $2.6 million a year on average in costs in the next 10 years to meet the demands of President Obama's proposed health care reform, a daunting task when half of those hospitals lose money. USAToday reported that “many hospital CEOs aren't complaining --- (and they) say that the hospitals they run are rife with inefficiency and that they are optimistic that the $155 billion in savings (Obama’s healthcare reform mandates) is do-able with the help of business disciplines, such as the Toyota Production System, lean manufacturing and Six Sigma.”
This is evidenced by the recent AHA Report on the Economic Crisis: Initial Impact on Hospitals. The report also noted that hospitals, which employ 5 million people nationwide, could be facing uncertain times as their financial health falters and ability to borrow funds for improving facilities and updating technology is squeezed. Now, more than ever, hospitals should embrace Lean Healthcare strategies in order to transform their organizations.
Innovative healthcare providers that have streamlined their organizations through Lean and successfully re-allocated their resources in order to drive patient outcomes, performance improvement and employee engagement have averted or minimized the need for drastic reductions. In the first study to investigate the implementation of Lean, ASQ surveyed 77 hospitals, where half report some level of lean or Six Sigma deployment.
Unlike many purported solutions, Lean Healthcare strives for the complete elimination of waste. Though many consider the TPS synonymous with lean manufacturing systems (Lean) or just-in-time (JIT) systems, it is not just these tools. The TPS philosophy is a human-centered (versus tool-based) business performance improvement process. Lean focuses on aligning method to outcome through people. While tool based solutions revolve around a set of select applications or tactical tools that facilitate waste reduction and mandate organizational change from the top down with little to no input from the staff members that do the work, the TPS is a complete management system that focuses on the customer and enables staff members to reduce waste and improve the process by which they deliver value (care) to the customer (patient). TPS methodologies focus on every facet and all aspects of the value stream or patient/care provider experience. It allows hospital staff to be more engaged in what they do and how they do it and why they do it while operating under a shared organizational vision.
This audio webcast features senior hospital executives and the TPS subject matter experts who have successfully implemented Lean in Healthcare environments over the last few years. By sharing their experiences, expertise and recommendations, the panelists will illustrate how a Lean implementation’s initial financial investments are typically recouped within a year while simultaneously improving morale and quality metrics. By sharing current insights, proven strategies and successful Lean implementations at leading hospitals, the panelists will demonstrate how hospitals can respond immediately and over time to not just survive, but thrive and prosper—all while improving the quality of care and ensuring a deep and systemic cultural transformation that will generate continuous and self-perpetuating improvement at all levels of their organization through staff engagement.
The ultimate payoff for hospital administrators, their staff, patients and the community are a reputation of leadership, measurable and significant ROI and ultimately, more time to care for patients.
Agenda:
- Securing financial and
administrative support
- Attaining a constant state of readiness for regulatory audits and accreditation
©2009 Health Resources Publishing