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St. Boniface: Lean Processes Streamline Patient Care
Author: Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters (CME Manitoba) Full text of this article about a Healthcare Value Leaders Network member is reprinted with permission of CME Manitoba, visit their website at www.daretocompete.ca. In the past year and a half, St. Boniface Hospital has been moving towards more Lean processes to improve patient care and the way the facility is run. The hospital got some “interesting tastes” of Lean thinking two years ago, and since then the board and executive have enthusiastically embraced the concept. Chief Medical Officer Dr. Bruce Roe says that the hospital has been implementing Lean processes in two main value streams. The first involves patients with suspected heart disease who present themselves at emergency. “We do a medical assessment and EKG within 15 minutes of seeing them,”Dr. Roe says. In the other value stream, the hospital has developed a system to move some patients directly to a ward from emergency after a surgeon or a member of the surgical team has assessed them. “In both streams, making the diagnosis more expeditiously gets the patients into treatment much faster”, Dr. Roe explains. The hospital is also in the process of adding more Lean thinking value streams including: how to assess the 90% of emergency patients who do not require a hospital stay, how to improve efficiency in the clinical supply chain, and how to create more capacity to treat heart or COPD patients. Another Lean tool that has worked well for the hospital is the Perfect Care Planner. It is a system that has been introduced on two surgical units, making it very visible for staff to know exactly what is required before patients can be discharged.
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