It is essential that you work
efficiently to maximize resources and improve quality. This is what lean is
about. Lean thinking is a practice
that aims to improve operations through continuous process improvement,
standardizing processes, and eliminating waste.
Roger Gerard, an executive business
partner with ThetaCare, a healthcare system in northeast Wisconsin, has over 38
years of experience in healthcare, manufacturing and service industries. This
is what Gerard said about lean practices
in medical practice at the Medical Group Management Association's Annual
Conference in San Diego.
Gerard said that healthcare is a very
expensive area which is becoming increasingly unaffordable for people to pay
for. Thus, it is necessary that the costs of healthcare productions are reduced.
This can be done only by removing the unnecessary wastes out of the processes
and systems so that it creates great value for the people who are buying the
products and services. He also said that it is important to analyze how the
processes involved in the entire healthcare industry are affecting revenue,
quality care and patient satisfaction.
On being asked how hospitals and
other healthcare industries could involve lean to their practices, Gerard said
that they will have to start with small experiments. Just like lean starts with
simple things like getting organized and making tiny changes and then goes on
to larger complex value-stream mapping, similarly, they too will have to put
the entire healthcare industry under inspection and see how the processes are
working together. They will need to make simple changes to the processes that
are not going along well and then slowly and steadily, they can shift to faster
growing solutions to help resolve the bigger problems. Gerard says that all
this is important to maintain a standard practice to create better consistent
quality.
While working on standardizing the
processes, it is often seen that there is opposition from the members of the
team. This is because they don’t understand that lean is a scientific method of
improving processes. They find it as a method they are forced to follow by
going against their own ways. If they understand the proper message that lean practices want to give, they will
definitely begin experimenting and make changes in the process to get a better
outcome.
When asked how he believes this lean transformation could be brought
about, Gerard said that he would start by partnering with a physician and an
administrator since both the clinical and administrative view points are
necessary. It is important that the whole team starts experimenting together
rather than individuals doing it their own way. He said that they could start
small by looking at the supplies in practice and how they can improve in making
sure that the staff has the supplies they need.
Gerard concluded that if every examination
room is standardized and organized well, then it would become very easy for
every member involved, may it be a physician or a nurse. Thus, lean is
absolutely necessary in the healthcare industry too.
