Lean Event
Introduce your concept.
Time is of the essence at a healthcare facility. Patients need to get the best care with minimal wastage of resources while not neglecting anyone. When patients come to my chosen health facility, they start by registering with the clerk at the ER. This registration involves filling out a form that details the patient’s demographics and the symptoms they are experiencing. It also requires patients to enter their insurance details and brief health history. The new process will install a biometric system for electronic registration. The first time, the patient will be asked 17 questions, and the clerk will enter the information into the system. The patient’s fingerprints on the forefinger and thumb will also be taken and stored for future visits to access the patient’s data. This will reduce the waiting time from 15 to 2-3 minutes. The patient will be entered into the current Health Information System and allocated the next available doctor or queued to the specialist doctor where applicable.
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The HIS will also need to be re-designed to include two essential features, diagnostic and prescription features; the patient can access that via an online platform. Nash et al. (2012, p.139) propose that disruptive innovation could be the answer to improved healthcare services. Patients visit several ERs throughout their lifetime, with health records generated with each visit. With each visit come different prescriptions, often printed out by the hospital and given to the patient. This can be a significant challenge for patients, especially elderly patients with multiple medication prescriptions visiting different healthcare facilities. The additional features are proposed to include the patients’ diagnostic reports, drugs, and the available pharmacies with the medicine lists in stock. The patient will access this information via the hospital’s website, which can be shared among pharmacies, patients, and diagnostic centers. The patient will use their name as the username and a unique password that will allow them to access their information.
Once the patient sees the doctor and is diagnosed, the information will be entered into the HIS, and the given prescription will also be recorded. The patient and the pharmacies will access this information. The hospital website will also have a list of registered pharmacies that will work as partners and will be required to list their stock on the website, their physical location, and their proximity to the hospital. When a patient logs in and searches for the prescription, the patient can see which pharmacy has the drugs and where the pharmacy is located. This will be very critical for patients with chronic illnesses and the elderly. Involving patients in their care is essential to better patient outcomes (Harvard Review, 2011). The pharmacies will also need to agree with the hospital that they will offer patients discounted drug prices and pay an agreed minimal royalty to the hospital for referring the patients to them. This way, the hospital will reduce the overall costs by reducing the waiting time for patients at the hospital’s pharmacy while at the same time generating a passive income from royalties. Additionally, the hospital will reduce its costs when there is a reduction in Adverse Drug Effects from patients returning to the facility following a misunderstanding/misinformation or any other fault-causing action that would cause an ADE.
Create a Process Flow Analysis of your given process.
Patients at the healthcare facility follow a slow and labor-intensive process when they check into the ER. They are required to fill in a 17-question form that includes what is deemed as relevant details. This takes approximately 15 minutes per patient and thus creates a bottleneck at the ER and more so when other factors are added, such as language barrier, understaffing, and patient low literacy levels, among other factors. To compound the situation further, the same category of persons takes even longer when they finally see the doctor in the rooms. Another challenge is ensuring that the patient understands what the prescription requires (Flores, 2006; van Rosse, 2016). That said, the patient registration, diagnostic, and prescribing of drugs need to be compressed in such a way that it will not only reduce waiting time and reduce pressure on working staff but also reduce costs for the healthcare facility.
Describe the waste that you can observe and name it.
The primary wastes identified in the entire patient care process are time and, by extension, the profitability of the healthcare facility. Additionally, medical errors tend to occur due to the cumbersome registration process and from ADE, more so, by elderly and chronic illnesses patients.
Who would you invite as stakeholders for a “Lean Event” to process this—clarify—look for improvement strategies?
The IT department will be involved as they would be required to work with an outsourced HIS Company responsible for re-designing the current system at the hospital. Local pharmacies will also be applied as the proposal to partner with the hospital is presented to them. The hospital Finance department will need to ascertain the project’s feasibility and deliver the cost savings of going ahead with the process change. The staff operating the re-designed HIS will be trained in the same. A biometric equipment installation company will also be included, which will install the system and train the hospital staff to use it. And lastly, the hospital board will need to approve the proposed project.
Identify barriers and potential savings for this Lean Event.
The foreseeable barriers include employee resistance to change, which will require intensive training and implementation of the Lewin’s Unfreeze-Change-Freeze process (Bartunek & Woodman, 2015) to ensure the change in approach is successful. Another possible barrier will be the patient’s acceptance of the change and assimilation. There may be patients who would still prefer the old manner of doing things, and these, too, will require a lot of encouragement to accept the change. Pharmacies will also likely negotiate for lower royalties and lower discounts than the hospital proposes.
However, the barriers notwithstanding, the hospital stands to save time, meaning the doctors will see more patients than usual. Savings on costs related to the outsourcing of pharmacy services are also expected to be substantial in addition to saving on waiting time of patients at the hospital pharmacy, reduced number of cases reporting at the hospital from ADE initiated by patients, and lowered costs related to medical errors as staff will access patient information from the re-designed HIS.
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References
Bartunek, J. M., & Woodman, R. W. (2015). Beyond Lewin: Toward a temporal approximation of organization development and change. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior. 2(1):150112145937002. DOI:10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-032414-111353
Harvard Business Review (2011). Harvard Business review on fixing the healthcare from the inside & out.
Flores, G. (2006). Language barriers to health care in the United States. New England Journal of Medicine, 355(3), 229-231.
Nash, D. B., Clarke, J. L., Skoufalos, A., & Horowitz, M. (2012). Health care quality: The clinician’s primer.
van Rosse, F., de Bruijne, M., Suurmond, J., Essink-Bot, M. L., & Wagner, C. (2016). Language barriers and patient safety risks in hospital care. A mixed methods study. International Journal of nursing studies, 54, 45-53.
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Question 
Process Flow Writing Assignment
Hi, I need help with the Process Flow writing assignment. Thank you
Lean Event
You will be assessing the process and flow of any activity either in health care or outside of the health care setting (e.g., processing work orders in your department, looking at how a patient is admitted into the hospital inpatient units, or examining how you are storing raw materials for production in your facility).
- Introduce your concept.
- Create an s Analysis of your given process.
- Describe the waste that you can observe and name it.
- Who would you invite as stakeholders for a “Lean Event” to process this—clarify—look for improvement strategies?
- Identify barriers and potential savings for this Lean Event.
This is an outline paper (not fully integrated) to give you time to focus on each area of concern listed 1-5. It is not a formal APA paper