Rapid, But Not Reckless Improvement...
How Healthcare Providers Can Have It Both Ways!
It's no secret that healthcare providers are under extreme pressure to reduce costs while simultaneously improving the quality of care and patient safety. Given these pressures, deploying Lean Six Sigma would seem to be an obvious solution.But the fact is, the adoption rate for Lean Six Sigma by healthcare provider organizations has been slow. And, even for those hospitals and other care providers that have taken the prescription, most report that implementation has proven to be very challenging.
Over the past five years Leap Technologies has worked with a number of leading hospitals to deploy a "leaner and more healthcare-friendly" approach to Lean Six Sigma. Read below and in the case studies listed for more.
Leap Insights & Innovation
What make the road to better quality at lower costs so challenging for healthcare providers? In our experience it's not the lack of full-time improvement experts such as Black Belts or lack of data on root causes of problems. The core problem is the fact that healthcare providers operate in a complex stakeholder environment where solving one problem inevitably leads to creating another. The result is often a stalemate on taking action.
Getting doctors, nurses, support staff, administrators and suppliers on the same page when it comes to making improvements is a game that facts and data alone won't win. The more critical part of the formula for faster improvement is a process for productive engagement: A way to efficiently involve all stakeholders in a structured discussion of the problems and search for win/win solutions.
It sounds simple. And it can be. But it doesn't happen unless there is an easy way to move quality improvement out of its functional silo and into the hands of healthcare professionals doing the work.
Over the past five years, Leap has had notable success helping hospitals and other healthcare provider organizations break through the impasse to faster improvement. The key to more rapid, but not reckless improvement has been the ability to supplement the traditional quality improvement toolset with Fast-Change Tools that make it easier for busy healthcare workers to get into the improvement game in a productive way. The result is more open and honest discussion of the issues, creative solution generation and practical implementation given resource constraints.
Select from the menu on the left to review examples of healthcare organizations achieving cost and quality improvements in accelerated timeframes.
Click here to download an overview of Leap's Rapid Lean for Healthcare Services »