Lean in the Healthcare Industry

With the cost of healthcare skyrocketing and the confidence level in our healthcare systems declining, it is critical that the entire healthcare industry re-examine its internal practices.  The question of, “Why don’t we have the best healthcare system on earth?” is much-debated. The fact — real or perceived — is that there is a huge amount of “waste” in the healthcare system.  The other (sad) fact is that many healthcare organizations have genuinely tried to improve.  They have spent months or years, and hundreds of thousands of dollars, on assessments and analyses that are suppose to give them the appropriate answers.

Problem # 1: Many of these large firms that perform the analysis don’t know how to do the actual implementation.  Because of the intensely time-consuming side of making the necessary changes/improvements, they simply hand over a report and walk away.  If YOU don’t do what they said, they can throw it back in your court. 

Problem # 2:  Even if the initial assessment was a good one, very few organizations have the internal expertise to facilitate a MAJOR, long-term improvement project that crosses functional lines and overflows between diverse (and often very territorial) areas of the healthcare industry.  Even listing out the various departments of a hospital can be overwhelmingly complex and sometimes, completely daunting. 

Therefore, it is not surprising that — while willing — many hospitals, administrators, private practices, insurance companies, pharmacies, etc. simply don’t know how to begin.   

The Answers

Here’s the good news for those of you who may be frustrated by any (or all) of the above. GDC Total Business Solutions IS different from some of the other large consulting firms.  Primarily because we refuse to say, “Here’s what you should do. Good luck and good-bye”.   We have decades of combined experience implementing corrective actions and continuous improvement activities. We collaborate with our clients. We create the foundational improvement teams, using the right people — those who can and are willing — to make sustainable changes. We teach, coach, and mentor these people to lead the long-term quest for improvement. We provide you with the necessary education and tools to drive change, measure and analyze progress, set the appropriate goals, assign tasks, allocate resources, etc. 

Our focus, like yours, is to reduce the non-value-adding activities that hinder patient throughput, impact clinical outcomes, and create patient dissatisfaction.  Through our hands-on facilitation of a series of Kaizen* events, we help you to make process improvements in the entire patient treatment flow — from entering the hospital, diagnosis, treatment, discharge, and follow-up (and all stops between). 

* Kaizen – This is the Japanese term for Continuous Improvement.  It has been adopted in this country to represent a structured, facilitated event where a team of people, with a specific set of goals, make sustainable improvements in a finite period of time.  Each event typically lasts from one to three weeks.

Great Results:

• Reduction of Cycle-time of the Accounts Receivable process from 4.5 days to 2 hours;
• Reduction of Recovery Room Stay for Joint Replacement patients from 90 minutes to 40 minutes, providing time for one additional surgery each day;
• Achieving a 20-minute reduction in “Time to Bed After Bed Assignment,” gaining additional capacity for 80 patients per year;
• Savings of a minimum of 10 minutes/day per operating room for 40 minutes per day savings (this was for 4 rooms);
• Significant, sustainable gains in treatment throughput, patient length-of-stay, clinical outcomes, and operating costs that begin to be realized in a very short time.   

GDC’s Lean in Healthcare process is well-established, successful, and will provide you with the structure and impetus that is necessary to begin the “Lean Journey.”  With the appropriate buy-in and support (no “lip service” here) from your senior staff, significant improvements can be achieved in a relatively short period of time. 

Maintenance and sustainability can only be accomplished with a strong foundation and through the development and implementation of a sound performance measurement system.  GDC can help your organization to achieve its vision, mission, goals and objectives.  We will hold your hand for as long as you need us, but our goal is to make you self-sufficient.

Allow us to come in to give you a preliminary assessment.

 “You can’t afford to wait until it’s too late.”