| Healthcare
is one of the most stressed and challenged industries
today. Public sector entities (Governmental, Legal,
Regulatory, Social systems) and private sector
industries (Manufacturing, pharmaceutical, Insurance)
co-mingle amidst constant industry changes. This
has fostered an atmosphere in which direct providers
and end users struggle to have a customer-focused
relationship.
For example, the patient may compete with the
3rd party payer as the “customer”.
Profit centred businesses follow a different code
of professional ethics than non-profit entities.
Accreditations are numerous and required to stay
in business, and often focused on documentation
versus actual observed processes. In the worst
cases, medical or organizational decisions are
made by non-providers, threatening quality of
care as well as adding the inevitable cost of
middlemen, or in KAIZEN speak, “non-value
adding activities”.
Those of you
who are promoting total quality in your organizations
already know that excessive authorizations, inspections,
and justification of these types of waste, plague
efforts to keep down costs and increase care.
While there is always a need for some important
if technically ‘non-value adding’
support services, such as oversight for patient
safety, the expansion of inspections & oversight
activities often becomes the “improvement”
in quality efforts.
The constraints
and demands of this industry demand the utmost
respect and admiration for those providers who
stay in the field, let alone continue to try to
change and improve the systems within which they
work. In the most basic of manufacturing operations,
support systems require a continuous improvement
mandate in order to ensure manufacturing excellence.
This is no less important, and often more critical,
in healthcare.
The
Challenges: The practical
challenges to incorporating lean in Healthcare
begin with identifying the structural & organizational
functionalism under which they operate. Policy
Deployment is essential to integrate theses functions
and align leadership towards improvement objectives,
through a very disciplined leadership approach
utilized in the Toyota Production System. Healthcare
industry consultants typically lack the experience
& knowledge of what “LEAN” and
“KAIZEN” really mean in terms of long-term
change & the cultural practices, which drive
quality services while reducing costs. Hospitals
and other medical organizations drive for “ROI”
but miss the process targets, which is the lean
way to achieve that for them. Employees are unsure
of the real goals of the organizations and their
own managers. And frustrated internal improvement
staff is saddled with trying to engage workers
in improvement activities & “teams”,
without the necessary direction or mandate from
the line management. Most damaging, senior staff
goes out of their way to circumvent one another
in defense of their own departments.
|
Aligned leadership strategy
& direction for short & long term
