All over the world Health Care costs increase rapidly urging for better cost and resource management without impacting the quality (in many cases even increasing it) of the services offered in hospital and other related institutions and organisations.
Dr Uly Ma and Anastasia Marinopoulou have supported various initiatives proposed and introduced from members of staff with short or longer training programmes and consultation services towards resource maximisation, cost containment and job satisfaction, always tailored around tight work schedules (LSBU - DMS course)
The same Lean tools apply in this sector too with 5S, FMEA, Kaizen, Process mapping, A3 and work levelling.
Some examples are presented!
Parsons Green Walk in Centre (U.K)
After the initial training sessions there was an immediate improvement to 85% accuracy. After the 2nd month of monitoring, data accuracy improved to 93% with estimates for income recovery (income lost due to incorrect data entry) for 2012-13 to £100,000.
South London Health Care NHS trust / Queen Mary’s Hospital Sidcup site (U.K.)
The project started with the initiative to improve patient’s records when admitted to hospital.Using various Lean tools and practices, the operational procedures were mapped and became evident that a) each nurse had to fill in 18 to 20 different forms b) there were variations as for the fields filled in and the data recorded.
Discussions took place for ideas and views and new processes, forms, training programs and internal communications were developed that resulted into:just 1 (one) process of 3 steps with a form for the information that was necessary for the patient’s admission and follow-up, saving nursing personnel’s time by 10 hours for 100 admissions (in total 45 hours for 100 admissions, standardising the new process) and 90% improvement on job satisfaction!
Lewisham Addiction Psychology Services (U.K.)
Using Lean tools and practices the process mapping revealed that from the 3 phases of 23 steps described in the official booklets the reality was 5 phases of 132 steps and a calculated cost of £1,467 per month on activities of no value for the customer/patient.
The whole operational system was redesigned to 1 (one) process of 54 steps, saving £947 per month with a reduction in response to 4 weeks and with a target to improve it even more with the wider adoption of Lean techniques and the training of more teams on continuous improvement.