Ill. hospital execs find savings in Lean methodologies – Modern Healthcare

It’s nice to see Modern Healthcare is doing some podcasts, or at least I am just discovering them.

I’ve linked to a 5-minute podcast with a CEO and CIO from Delnor Community Hospital in Illinois. They talk about the first year of their lean journey, which started via kaizen events or “Rapid Process Improvement Workshops” through a consulting firm.

Their initial goals were improving cost, quality, and patient satisfaction. In the first six months of “hospital wide” implementation, their investment of $650k (including staff time) led to a net revenue increase of $1.5M by increasing capacity and throughput and cut costs by over $1M.

It’s important to note, as in this example, that lean is not just a “cost cutting” strategy. By freeing up capacity, you can create more revenue and make patients happier by not keeping them waiting as long to get in or go home.

Their initial efforts were in obstetrics, where, before lean, there wasn’t enough capacity, patient satisfaction and staff morale were poor, and length of stay was too high. It sounds like that was a real pain point for them, which is often one driver of where you start with lean — where is the biggest problem to solve.

With lean, they are delivering more babies with fewer staff hours, the workplace is calmer, and morale has improved, the executives report.

I’ve captured some of the highlights, but check out the link, it’s interesting to hear it in their own words.

p.s. Check out the “Five Questions” Q&A with our good friend Dr. Sami Bahri over at Evolving Excellence and click “Lean Dentist” below to read, hear, and see more of him.

About LeanBlog.org: Mark Graban is a consultant, author, and speaker in the “lean healthcare” methodology, focused on improving quality and patient safety, improving access, reducing costs, and fully engaging healthcare professionals. He is also the Chief Improvement Officer for KaiNexus.

Tagged as: Healthcare, Leadership, Lean Dentist