I found this great article by Michael McBride over on the DARK Daily website about the Virginia Mason Medical Center (VMMC) and its Lean journey. Other than the important financial turnaround that VMMC achieved, the medical center appears to have learned the most crucial lesson: "...that the patient, and not VMMC itself, was the true customer."
The article includes some quotes and insights from chairman and CEO Gary Kaplan, MD, who leads the Lean initiative, which began 10 years ago. He interestingly reaffirmed the pivotal role IT plays in process redesign: "You have to redesign your work first. The data comes first; and IT can help eliminate manually based errors." In addition, although it is is not detailed in the article, Kaplan achieved what can sometimes be one of the hardest early hurdles by "securing buy-in of all senior leadership at the hospital."
Are any of the readers of this blog familiar with the Virginia Mason Medical Center? Do you think it has set the right example for other medical facilities to follow? Are there areas that still lack improvement?
The story of the Virginia Mason Medical Center's Lean odyssey has been revealed in book titled Transforming Health Care: Virginia Mason Medical Center's Pursuit of the Perfect Patient Experience authored by Charles Kenney.
Showing posts with label Lean Hospitals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lean Hospitals. Show all posts
1.26.2011
Mark Graban's "Lean for Haiti"
Today's blog entry features a special note from Mark Graban, author of the book Lean Hospitals: Improving Quality, Patient Safety, and Employee Satisfaction and founder and lead contributor of LeanBlog.org:
January 12 marked the one-year anniversary of the earthquake that devastated Haiti in January of 2010.
Last year, I was fortunate to meet a special person -- Russell Maroni, an x-ray tech at Akron Children's Hospital. He volunteered in Haiti for 15 days in February 2010 as part of the earthquake relief efforts. He was unexpectedly, and necessarily, pressed into service in a medical role, not only caring for patients, but also using his formal lean training from ACH to help improve processes and radiology patient throughput at a field hospital.
Russell wrote a very compelling, and very personal, journal during his time in Haiti. He and his colleagues took many pictures. We are sharing this all in a PDF eBook that we are freely distributing - to share the story and to create awareness for Haiti relief needs. We are asking people who read the book to consider donating to the Friends of the Orphans, which runs an orphanage in Haiti.
The journal isn't mainly a 'lean story,' although it does include his hand-drawn A3 plan. It's a very personal story, of his own prayer and contemplation of the trip, and his experiences in the midst of that tragedy.
To read more, go to the Lean for Haiti site, which has links to the PDF and other social media sites for the relief effort.
January 12 marked the one-year anniversary of the earthquake that devastated Haiti in January of 2010.
Last year, I was fortunate to meet a special person -- Russell Maroni, an x-ray tech at Akron Children's Hospital. He volunteered in Haiti for 15 days in February 2010 as part of the earthquake relief efforts. He was unexpectedly, and necessarily, pressed into service in a medical role, not only caring for patients, but also using his formal lean training from ACH to help improve processes and radiology patient throughput at a field hospital.
Russell wrote a very compelling, and very personal, journal during his time in Haiti. He and his colleagues took many pictures. We are sharing this all in a PDF eBook that we are freely distributing - to share the story and to create awareness for Haiti relief needs. We are asking people who read the book to consider donating to the Friends of the Orphans, which runs an orphanage in Haiti.
The journal isn't mainly a 'lean story,' although it does include his hand-drawn A3 plan. It's a very personal story, of his own prayer and contemplation of the trip, and his experiences in the midst of that tragedy.
To read more, go to the Lean for Haiti site, which has links to the PDF and other social media sites for the relief effort.
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