Patient safety lessons from lean manufacturing

by Diane Miller How does "production" apply to healthcare? Patients are not cars, of course. Yet both manufacturing and healthcare are filled with complex production processes. In healthcare, these include admitting a patient, scheduling a clinic visit or undergoing surgery. All these processes should embrace the concepts of quality, safety, customer satisfaction, staff satisfaction and cost effectiveness. For example, at Virginia Mason Health System in Seattle, in much the same way that Toyota employees are empowered to "stop the line" when they encounter a problem on the assembly line, we used the Virginia Mason Production System (VMPS)to develop a patient safety alert (PSA) system. Our PSA system requires all 5,500 Virginia Mason staff members who encounter a situation likely to harm a patient to make an immediate report and cease any activity that could cause further harm. If the safety of a patient is indeed at risk, an investigation is immediately launched to correct the problem. Most reports are processed within 24 hours--a significant improvement from when reports took up to 18 months to resolve. Patient safety at Virginia Mason has increased and professional liability claims have dropped. Thousands of people from 17 different countries have come to Virginia Mason during the last several years to learn about VMPS and tour our facilities. Many have learned how to create their own brand of VMPS with the help of the Virginia Mason Institute, established in 200...
Source: hospital impact - Category: Health Managers Authors: Source Type: blogs