Health Care Lean Process Improvement

Objectives

Reducing delays and eliminating waste is critical to survival in today’s healthcare sector. In many cases the standard response to eliminating delays is to add resources, which adds cost without eliminating inefficiencies. By focusing on patient flow and the implementation of lean principles, Empirical Solutions Corporation provides quantitative data to guide the prioritization of process improvement initiatives. The objectives of a typical Healthcare Lean Process Improvement study may include:

• Reduced length of stay
• Reduced admission and discharge times
• Increased bed turn-over rates
• Reduced ED and PACU delays
• Identification of bottleneck resources
• Identification of strategies for elevating and/or saturating bottleneck resources
• Elimination of non-value added operations as required to achieve a lean flow

Performance Measures

Improving patient flow and healthcare system efficiency requires mapping of process flows, identification of lean value streams, quantification of variability parameters and identification of performance measures that can be easily measured and understood throughout the healthcare enterprise. Typical performance measures for a healthcare lean process improvement study may include:

• Detailed ED process flow times, including arrival to MD evaluation, admission to in-patient bed, disposition to discharge, and overall length of stay
• Daily census variability
• Resource utilizations
• Operating costs
• Bed turn rates

Benefits

Applying lean principles to the analysis and optimization of patient flow in healthcare settings allows heathcare providers to increase the quality of care provided while also increasing capacity and profitability. Typical benefits include:

• Increased patient satisfaction
• Improved quality and safety
• Increased throughput capability and the associated revenues
• Reduced direct and indirect labor and associated operating costs
• Reduced inventory carrying costs