SEATTLE – Improving processes has accomplished more than just making life easier at Seattle Children’s Hospital. It has put money in the bank.
More than that, it has improved the facility’s ability to keep workers engaged and happy, and it has improved lives for patients and clinical staff.
The facility has seen enough results from the use of continuous process improvement, or CPI, that it maintains a staff of nearly 25 and has trained nearly 600 staff in the process, first developed by Toyota.
“We’re in this for the long haul, not as the flavor of the month,” said Pat Hagan, president and chief operating officer of the facility. “We went to the board and told them we needed to invest in this; we wanted to invest in our own infrastructure. We knew that it will both be better culturally and as a long-term investment.”
The facility began to implement CPI incrementally, starting about eight years ago. First attempts didn’t involve physicians; now, clinicians are actively engaged in the process.
The facility’s board approved a multi-million-dollar investment in CPI after seeing the benefits and financial results, Hagan said.
“We consider it a strategic imperative to be operationally excellent,” he said. “We’re using CPI to support growth and development and grow programs effectively and in an unwasteful way.”
The academic facility now has support from faculty, the nursing staff and its CFO, who has taken the principles and decided to “dismantle as wasteful the annual budgeting process,” Hagan said.
CPI excels in using a business group within an organization to pinpoint bottlenecks and issues in workflow to make small incremental improvements. Because the principles are simple, they can be applied by almost any workgroup in a facility to achieve a quick and sometimes significant payback.
For example, to help decrease delays and reduce documentation in the operating room, the team created a boarding pass system with new forms and processes. The number of forms was reduced to seven from 21; the number of lines of redundant information was reduced to 40 from 360; and staff time to complete forms was cut to 21 minutes from 37.
In the ambulatory clinic, the patient appointment wait time was cut when the team redesigned the specialty clinic triage center. A patient’s wait for appointment scheduling is now two days, compared to seven previously.
Nurse perceptions were addressed through the process. Internal surveys found that staff perceived supply shortages primarily because nurses couldn’t find a reliable source of extra pillows for patients. After that supply issue was addressed, nursing surveys improved.
In all, the hospital’s efforts have paid off. Hagan said the cost per unit of service stood at $1,770 per day in 2006, a decline of $55 per day from $1,825 in 2005.
But it’s more than just saving money, he said.
“We’re seeing our world not from just a cost perspective but in an integrated way,” he said. “If we eliminate waste, people are supported much better. If we take it out, it reduces our chances for error. It’s enabling us to improve delivery times and improves access to services and our ability to create a more cost-effective environment. It’s just a better quality product.”