Author: Heather Guild

Mark Graban, the author of Lean Hospitals, asserts that, “waste is any problem that pops up during the day that delays care.” And Christopher Kim, MD, MBA, of the Departments of Internal Medicine and Pediatrics at the University of Michigan asserts, “up to 40% of time spent in hospitals is waste.” The article from which these quotations came is nearly 5 years old but the situations it describes are no less true in 2013 than they were in 2008.

Bad Processes Lead to Waste

We whole heartedly support the hospital LEAN movement and why your hospital should LEAN forward. Bad processes lead to waste. Waste leads to higher costs, lower employee satisfaction, and compromised patient outcomes. No one wants to blindly perpetuate that destructive cycle. Equally important, in today’s environment of increasing demand for services and decreasing amounts of reimbursements, hospitals must address HOW work gets done (the process) and not simply WHAT work gets done (the task) if they are to survive the profit squeeze.

The strength of LEAN initiatives is the critical examination of clinical processes, breaking them down into parts, and eliminating waste through a series of deliberate steps. The weakness of LEAN initiatives is poor sustainability, in large part because workflow technology is not part of the LEAN strategy and people revert to old behaviors that compromise the LEAN initiative.

Technology Offers Repeatable, Measurable, Sustainable Results

Thus, whether you use our clinical workflow technology, OPTIMI$ER, or build your own process solution, we strongly advise you make workflow technology part of your LEAN strategy. Keep in mind, defining a technology solution should follow the hard work of understanding how people currently do their work, mapping the current state process, and then determining the desired future state process. There is no value in automating a bad process! Process case studies across multiple clinical settings demonstrate how technology can help orchestrate clinical workflow in a repeatable, measurable, and sustainable way leading to:

• a reduction of errors, omissions, duplications and delays
• an increase in financial performance, employee productivity and satisfaction, and patient safety and satisfaction
• a return on investment that can be achieved in 3-6 months

Please contact us if you would like to discuss opportunities for you to further your efforts to LEAN forward. Email vicki@optimiumhealth.com.

Hospital Executives agree, Health Information Technology is a critical component for operating room staff to better manage increasing surgical case volume, to lower the cost per patient served, and to drive successful outcomes. This declaration comes from a survey conducted by independent research organization Penn Shoen Berland among 142 hospital executives including CEOs, COOs, CFOs, CIOs, and CNOs.

Aging populations with increasing needs for surgical procedures, as well as a general population with more access to healthcare are the primary reasons case volume across US operating rooms has steadily increased over the past several years. Assessing the state of operating room (OR) volume today and in the future:

• 49% of respondents report that OR case volume has increased in the past year
• 73% expect OR case volume to increase over the next 3 years
• 39% seeing an increase for inpatient cases and 91% anticipating an increase in outpatient cases

In order to meet increasing demand with the resources they have today, more than 79% of decision-makers agree that Health IT solutions tailored to the way ORs work will drive success inside the OR. The executives go further to say that the top 4 strategies to help reduce escalating OR costs are:

• Increasing OR efficiency and patient throughput (73%)
• More closely managing overall workflow (57%)
• Cutting spending on supplies (52%)
• Reducing overtime (35%)

The top 3 perioperative IT capabilities executives want for OR management are:

• Scheduling (20%)
• Seamless integration between departments and systems (16%)
• Information capabilities such as data storage/audit trail; real-time data; EHR (12%)

Finally, 76% of executives say that “scheduling the OR is inherently different from scheduling other services in the hospital. And, therefore requires a uniquely tailored process and IT solution.”

Clearly, these executives see perioperative IT solutions as having tremendous potential to help control costs while delivering efficiencies that can help hospitals meet the demands of rising surgical volumes. Prior to the introduction of the OPTIMI$ER Surgical Workflow Technology Suite, there have been no orchestration overlay solutions that streamline and guide care givers through the 100-200 steps necessary to get each patient to surgery. Because OPTIMI$ER increases the efficiency of handoffs, and increases the communication between people and systems, it can greatly enhance the functionality of legacy IT and processes that are currently in place. OPTIMI$ER is the game-changer:

• OPTIMI$ER interfaces with most legacy systems and will provide mechanisms that enable the automated “pull” and “push” of data with those systems in such a way that workflows are enhanced.
• OPTIMI$ER will guide caregivers through all the tasks and information exchanges necessary to get a surgical patient from first appointment to first incision, seamlessly and safely.
• OPTIMI$ER was designed with the perioperative care giver in mind – it is not an off the shelf process management system.

If your hospital or surgical group practice sees a similar demand for ORs on the horizon and you question whether or not your current IT configuration will drive operating room efficiency necessary to meet increasing demand, please contact Vicki Harrison at vicki@optimiumhealth.com.