Over the years, we have had several posts applying lean operations to health care (see, for example, this or that). However, we have yet (I think) to post anything on Virginia Mason. Despite what its name might suggest, Virginia Mason is located in Seattle and has long been known as a leader in taking lessons from Toyota and applying them to health care. Now, in the form of a report from PBS’s NewsHour, we have an excuse to remedy that oversight (Rooting Out Waste in Health Care by Taking Cue From Toyota Assembly Lines, Oct 24). Check it out!
There are a couple of cool things going on here that reflect different aspects of Toyota production principles. Take eliminating waiting rooms. This minimizes inventory and hence waste. But it also allows for visual control. If your waiting room seats 200, having 20 people in it is not a source of alarm. If you waiting room seats 20, however, it’s a different story. With just 10 people waiting, things start to look bad and presumably a sense of urgency to figure out why things are backing up.
Putting a medical assistant in charge of patient flow in the clinic has a similar feel. The individual care giver is hard pressed to walk out of an exam room and know immediately what needs to happen next. An MA monitoring who’s doing what a central display is able to make sure that resources are deployed where they are needed most.
Finally, having checks built into the system that limit who gets an MRI is a nice example of mistake proofing the system. I’m sure that some physicians chafe at not being able to jump to that test but if there is agreed upon process for treating back pain, this assure that docs are sticking with it.
Marty,
I’ve had the privileage of working on a Vendor Collaboration project with Virginia Mason Medical Center in the recent past. They lead their vendor through a Kaizen process, complete with swim lanes, to devise a new order management process. It was taking the vendor 4 FTE’s to manage the VMMC orders (from Cerner) into their legacy (HG, 30+ yrs old) and the results were still a 7% error rate.
VMMC has been a leader so long that they actually teach courses to anyone, especially healthcare companies. I can’t say enough about how strong the VMMC team appears. The Kaizen identified a new solution that reduced the 4 FTE’s to 0 and the error rate to 0. Our (http://babblewareinc.com) software and services delivered the solution that week, during the Kaizen, and they were live on the solution the following Monday.
It appears that all medical routines can follow a prescribed ‘BOM’. This can be organized to be effective in treatment/survival rates as well as cost efficient in terms of resources used. Enterprise software can be deployed in a matter of hours that standardize the process and unobtrusively track progress and results. We are working with Healthcare Industry leaders who are seeking to improve their efficiency, accuracy, visibility AND patient safety. All of which can be achieved simultaneously.
what a fine blend of using innovative Toyota principles in healthcare sector.