Lean Healthcare

Transforming Processes to Maximize Patient Value

A One-Day Seminar

Lean is the best approach to minimizing the pain and challenges of healthcare management in a time of great change.

The goal of Lean is to eliminate waste in a system so that system can deliver more value to its customers (patients). There’s arguably no industry in which this methodology is more applicable and valuable than in healthcare.

Patients sometimes wait weeks for needed clinic appointments. Inconsistencies in the verification of insurance can result multi-months delays in adding new providers. Variation in procedure times between surgeons causes underutilization in the OR. And the inability to accurately measure performance can perpetuate problems like these indefinitely. The Lean methodology is tailor-made to address today’s operational challenges.

This seminar will utilize a real-world healthcare example (MRI Utilization at a Children’s Hospital) to demonstrate the fundamentals of Lean Healthcare and provide a framework you can adapt in your healthcare organization.

What You Will Learn

Leverage Lean as a means to increase both efficiency and revenue
Enhance your staff’s understanding of what the patient values in the healthcare experience
Identify sources of waste in your processes and systems
Eliminate the root causes of delays, wasted resources and rework
Generate analytical and out-of-the-box solutions
Measure the unmeasurable
Identify process improvement opportunities that will have the most impact for your patients and your facility’s bottom line

Seminar Outline

I. Key Concepts

Why Lean is a good fit for today’s healthcare challenges
Importance of focusing on processes that deliver patient value
Waste elimination vs. revenue capture/growth
The MEDIC process management cycle

II. MRI Case Study

Project Charter / Team Selection
Process Analysis: System, Value Stream and Cross-Functional maps
Establishing a Baseline: Data Collection
Patient service data
Efficiency data
Service time data
Cause Analysis: Root Causes that Impact Utilization
Solution Identification: Streamline or Redesign
Solution Prioritization and Development
Solution Implementation
Results
Project Challenges: Behavioral, Technical, and Organizational

III. Cool Tools and How to Apply Them

The System and Value Stream Maps: Understanding Patient and Family Expectations
Muda: Eliminating Non-Value-Adding Activities
The Five Why’s: Breaking down Process Problem Causes
The Five Max Method: Finding “Out of the Box” Solutions
Solution Development: Winners and Losers from Change

IV. Your Action Plan

Selecting the Right Process
Next steps

Who Should Attend

This seminar is ideal for any healthcare leader who needs to improve utilization, revenue generation/capture, and the patient experience, including:

VP or Director of Operations
Leaders in any department that schedules and services patients
Manager or Director of Surgery, Patient Care, Laboratory Operations, Nursing Services, Radiology or Outpatient Services
Nursing Managers or Charge Nurses
Emergency Department leaders
Quality Analysts, Managers, and Directors
Leader or member of a patient experience or Quality Improvement team