Category: Healthcare
MBOE Sessions, Toyota Production System, Healthcare, Problem Solving, MBOE, MBOE Healthcare, Operations
With the theory of value stream mapping internalized, our MBOE program’s health-care cohort traveled to Ohio State’s Wexner Medical Center while the industry cohort headed to Center for Operational Excellence member Tosoh USA Inc. A key step before launching a value stream mapping exercise is to go to the gemba.
The MBOE program trains our students to be leading problem-solvers in their organization by providing the tools they need and, more importantly, teaching the behavior that creates lasting change. This week, we started handing out the tools.
Hospital administrators do a lot of hang-wringing over long turnaround times for procedure and operation rooms. They not only can’t get enough procedures done, but they have surgeons waiting around, twiddling their thumbs while rooms are getting prepared for the next patient. If several procedures in a 12-hour shift are scheduled and each one takes 15 minutes to set up, hours are wasted each day. Such an organization might boast of patient-focused care, but metrics indicate quite the opposite. Not being in a position to meet customer needs can hurt all the way to the bottom line.
A friend of mine who’s a cardiothoracic surgeon at a renowned hospital in India emailed me with a problem. Here’s what he wrote: “The people at my hospital are motivated, hardworking and some are brilliant, too. But the processes are abysmal. It takes three days to discharge a patient after I actually decide to; an admission entails eight signatures across four buildings; and my wait list is 24 days to surgery after admission.”
The arc of Gail Marsh’s personal and professional life is part success story and part cautionary tale – and she’d acknowledge that as much as anyone.