• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

TDO Working on Lean Initiative for Health-Care Sector

Posted on: Monday, 29 August 2005, 03:01 CDT

SYRACUSE - With costs continuing to rise, any help the health- care industry can get is important, says Cindy Oehmigen, senior processimprovement and lean specialist at the Central New York Technology Development Organization (TDO).

That's why the TDO is developing a program for health-care organizations based around lean-manufacturing principles. It should be available within the next year and will benefit hospitals, nursing homes, physician-practice groups, and other health-care organizations, Oehmigen says.

"They're facing a lot of the same issues as manufacturers," she says. "They have similar challenges to overcome."

Escalating costs, a shortage of skilled workers, regulatory pressures, and a constant drive for customer (patient) satisfaction are just a few of the common threads between manufacturing and health care.

The lean principles, which focus on eliminating waste from manufacturing processes, can essentially be applied as they are to the health-care world, Oehmigen contends. The TDO wants to partner with a local health-care organization to work on adjusting some of the terminology, however.

Since the lean philosophy is directed at manufacturers, some of the vocabulary is different. The TDO also wants to test the program on a limited basis before offering it widely.

Lean principles can help health-care organizations reduce mistakes, increase efficiency, and improve workflow, Oehmigen says.

"It's the same kinds of things you would see improved in a manufacturing facility," she says. "The principles are just applied to different processes."

For example lean thinking could be applied to registration in an emergency room. The process could be analyzed and broken down into its steps, Oehmigen says.

The wasteful steps would then be eliminated. It's not that different from analyzing how workers produce a part on a production line, she explains.

The principles could be applied to tasks like registration and billing or even medical procedures like drawing blood or medication administration.

"What we would do is teach them how to teach their employees to do these tasks," Oehmigen says. "They still have the responsibility to determine the best way to do those tasks."

Lean thinking in the health-care in dustry is new, but there are some organizations that have embraced it. Some of the successful initiatives, Oehmigen says, took place at the Cancer Treatment Centers of America, a network of three hospitals focusing on cancer treatment, in the states of Illinois, Oklahoma, and Washington.

The organization's newest hospital will open in Philadelphia this fall.

Cancer Treatment Centers has been using lean principles in all its hospitals for the past three years. It has an overall director of lean and each facility has an on-site director, says Roger Cary, chief operating officer of the organization.

The hospitals applied lean principles in numerous areas, he says. In one case, the number of steps it takes to admit someone dropped from 200 to 14.

Using lean thinking, staff members have reduced the number of blood samples collected from patients and the time it takes to complete a common checkup test. The principles also helped the organization's hiring process.

Before introducing lean thinking, job openings usually took about 40 days to fill. They now take 20, Cary says.

"We're able to find better candidates and find them faster that way," he says. "Candidates with lots of options in front of them don't always wait around if you take a long time to get back to them."

The programs help the hospitals be more efficient, but also improve patient care. The principles allow staff members to focus on tasks that have the greatest benefits to patients and eliminate others, Cary explains.

"We get rid of the waste and double down on what gives the greatest value to our patients," he says. "People feel highly productive that way. They feel charged up. They feel like they can make things happen."

Copyright Central New York Business Journal Aug 05, 2005

Source: Business Journal - Central New York, The

More News in this Category