Quality Improvement Programme
AHPI will assist the organisation in identifying quality improvement programmes in a systematic
manner in order to instil a quality culture.
Quality Improvement programme usually follows typically following steps:
- A trigger serves as a "wake-up call" that prompts the hospital to begin or renew an emphasis
on
quality improvement, marking the beginning of a cultural shift and leading to...
- Organizational and structural changes such as the establishment of quality-related councils
and
committees, the empowerment of nurses and other staff, and investments in new technology and
infrastructure that facilitate..
- A new problem-solving process, involving a standardized, systematic, multidisciplinary team
approach to identify and study problem areas, conduct root cause analysis, develop action
plans,
and hold team leaders accountable, resulting in the establishment of...
- New protocols and practices, including evidence-based policies and procedures, clinical
pathways
and guidelines, error-reducing software, and patient flow management techniques, lead to...
- Improvements in process and health-related measures (e.g., patient flow, errors,
complications,
and mortality), satisfaction and work environment, and "bottom line" indicators such as
reduced
length of stay and increased market share. Experiencing such positive outcomes provides
motivation to hospital staff, leading to the institutionalizing of continuous quality
improvements.
About Lean Healthcare
"Lean" is a new mindset for managing complex healthcare processes and supporting services to provide
the highest quality service with faster speed and at a minimum cost.
Lean healthcare is an innovative way to provide enhanced value to the customer and business growth
of healthcare organizations. Lean is a highly practical and effective management concept promoted by
two MIT professors, Jim Womack and Daniel Jones, based on the Toyota Production System (TPS). Toyota
is recognized as one of the most successful companies in the world, which has consistently grown
over the last seventy years due to its unique management system.
As an extension of the success of Toyota management principles in manufacturing and customer
service, other industries and service sectors, including healthcare, have made adaptations of Lean
to establish consistent quality, faster service delivery, and safety of healthcare personnel that
result in:
- Improved healthcare service quality by reducing clinical errors, mistakes, defects, and waiting
time.
- Increased capacity for handling more customers (patients) with the same resources.
- Reduced the cost of operations by eliminating non-value added activities.
- Improved staff and customer satisfaction through simplification of systems.
- Quality leadership of organization by matching it with world-class standards.
- Business growth by efficient utilization of resources.
Why Lean healthcare?
Since the last few years, the cost of healthcare has been continuously rising along with
increasing complexity and sophistication, in clinical processes. Due to increased sophistication
healthcare operations require a large number of people with special skills, expensive diagnostic
machines and complex processes to address quality and safety issues.
At the same time, in the healthcare process, patients have to wait more than 95% of the time to
get value-added service from clinical and other supporting healthcare processes. The waiting
time, too in the condition of sickness, is the greatest concern for service providers, which can
be best addressed by lean.
In such situations, the healthcare sector is coming under increasing pressure to deploy
resources more efficiently, reduce costs and improve service quality. In such complex systems,
people involved in managing the operations are often forced to intervene, making last minute
adjustments and becoming experts at fire fighting. The principles of Lean Thinking have been
developed to tackle just such problems.
Lean thinking in healthcare is not just about cost reduction, nor about 'efficiency'
improvements or staff cuts. It is about improving the safety and quality of healthcare by
applying a series of continuous incremental improvements in processes, people, and
organizational culture.
Interest in applying lean thinking to healthcare processes has grown across the world. Many
hospitals have begun to see how lean processes can deliver better quality outcomes, increase
customer satisfaction, and improve working conditions for staff while treating more patients
with the same resources.
How lean makes dramatic improvements?
In all kinds of processes, including healthcare, at any moment of time people are either adding
value or creating waste. Waste is defined as any activity or thing that does not add value but
absorbs resources. The focus of lean is to see and eliminate waste of all kinds of resources. By
understanding Lean principles, healthcare personnel will be able to look at their work
differently to identify potential savings in time, money, supplies, and goodwill and will be
able to eliminate waste by the application of lean tools. The ultimate effect of lean
implementation results in significant improvements in service speed, quality, profitability and
customer satisfaction.
Introducing the Lean concepts to Indian Hospitals
Customers are looking for hassle free, world-class healthcare services from Indian hospitals and
at the same time India is emerging as a preferred destination for Medical Tourism, which is
opening a new growth opportunity for Indian healthcare organizations. Implementation of Lean
healthcare will enhance the confidence of domestic as well as foreign customers in lean
hospitals that can assure world-class healthcare quality at a competitive cost.
