With the nation talking about improving healthcare and the healthcare insurance system, Mark Graban over at Lean Blog has posted a review of an article that appeared in the Washington Post. Using a Lean model, Seattle’s Children’s Hospital has made encouraging and substantial improvements. They have, for example, reduced risks of infection by reducing the number of days patients are on ventilators by 26% and saved $2.5 million in supplies in their first year of Lean use. Their success demonstrates the integral part Lean can play in adding to the healthcare debate.

Check out the Lean Blog post here, and the Washington Post article here.

Hospitals across the United States are beginning to embrace lean and Six Sigma business management strategies in attempts to reduce costs and improve productivity, according to a new national benchmarking study by ASQ.The ASQ Hospital Study, to which 77 hospitals responded, is the first study to investigate the implementation of lean and Six Sigma in U.S. hospitals.

According to the ASQ study, 53% of hospitals report some level of lean deployment, and 42% of hospitals report some level of Six Sigma deployment. Few hospitals participating in the study report “full deployment” of either lean (4% of hospitals) or Six Sigma (8%).

The reasons that neither method has been deployed in hospitals include: the need for resources (59% of hospitals), lack of information (41%) and leadership buy-in (30%). Eleven percent of hospitals surveyed were not familiar with either method.

Read the full article here.

Mark Graban interviews John S. Toussaint, MD, the CEO emeritus of ThedaCare, and CEO of the ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value. Dr. Toussaint is very well known for his leadership of the Lean efforts in the ThedaCare system, done under the heading of the ThedaCare Improvement System. ThedaCare has been profiled in the Wall Street Journal and many other articles about the quality and cost improvements they have achieved. In this podcast Dr. Toussaint talks about the ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value and some big picture issues related to Lean and healthcare improvement.

Listen to the podcast here.

The day he made the mistake, the surgeon at Regions Hospital jumped the gun. He was supposed to wait for the “timeout,” when everyone in the operating room pauses to make sure that the right patient is getting the right operation.But in December 2007, the surgeon skipped that step, picked up the scalpel and made the first incision — in the wrong spot.

Last year, after the operating-room blunder, staffers at Regions designed what they call a “timeout towel” to cover surgical instruments before operations. Now any surgeon who reaches for the scalpel too soon — before the safety rituals are complete — is greeted with the words “Time-Out!” emblazoned in red.

This article describes how lean countermeasures, such as the timeout towel mistake-proofing device, help to reduce medical errors, an increasingly pernicious health care problem.

Read about it here.

The Lean Blog recently had a guest post from author and Lean Healthcare practitioner, Naida Grunden. Her book, linked in the entry, is a collection of principles and case examples from the Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative. She was recently interviewed by a National Public Radio station and you can listen to it on the post.  The post includes an excellent letter that Naida posted to the “change.gov” website, where the Obama team is asking for specific input about healthcare reform.  Let’s hope they take her up on it!

Go to the Lean Blog post here.

John S. Toussaint, MD is the CEO emeritus of ThedaCare, and CEO of the ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value. Dr. Toussaint is very well known for his leadership of the Lean efforts in the ThedaCare system, done under the label of the ThedaCare Improvement System. ThedaCare has been profiled in the WSJ and many other articles about the quality and cost improvements they have achieved. This is the first of two podcast discussions recorded on the Lean Blog.  We will note when the second podcast is released.  In this podcast Dr. Toussaint looks back at ThedaCare’s accomplishments, reflects on their journey, and shares his advice for other hospitals.

This Lean Blog Podcast is a conversation with Patrick M. Anderson, the Executive Director of Chugachmiut, the Tribal consortium created to promote self-determination to the seven Native communities of the Chugach Region. Patrick shares their experiences with applying Lean principles to healthcare delivery in Alaska. This is the first part of a two-part discussion.

The podcast is available here.  You can also read more about Lean concepts at Chugachmiut on their website. In this epsiode, Patrick talks about the origins of Lean at Chugachmiut, how they used Kaizen Events in their healthcare clinics, and their abolition of annual performance reviews.

Piedmont Newnan Hospital has received a VHA Inc. Georgia Regional Leadership award for Operating Excellence as a result of efforts to improve operating room processes with the help of Lean thinking. Cross-functional teams used Lean training to increase operating room capacity and improve quality of patient care. Targeted improvement areas included instrument process flow, room turnover as well as standardization of supply areas, operating rooms and central cleaning.

Read the full article here.

At the Detroit Medical Center (DMC), CEO Mike Duggan claimed the application of lean principles helped the medical center return to profitability after years of loses. The medical center and several other area hospitals described how they are improving operations and patient care. At the DMC, employees studied patients journeys through the facility, eliminating nonvalue-adding steps. The result: shorter waiting times that attracted more patients. In the emergency room, the DMC cut the average wait from a couple of hours to 29 minutes, increasing business by nearly 30%, Duggan said. At Trinity Health, a 44-hospital system based in Novi, the lean effort generated savings “easily in the tens of millions” in 18 months, according to the hospital.

Read the full article here.