Sessions

Welcome

Larry Aft, P.E., Director of Continuing Education and Program Development, IIE, and Vi Naylor, Executive Vice President, GHA
8-8:15 a.m.

Opening Session - Using Lean Six Sigma for Competitive Advantage: Succeed in a Value-Based Purchasing Era

Stephen Mayfield, Vice President Performance Improvement, Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian
8:15-9 a.m.

In order for hospitals to succeed in a value-based purchasing era, organizations must create efficient processes, deliver effective outcomes, cultivate engaged employees and deliver an enhanced experience. The principles and methods of lean Six Sigma, when applied as part of a comprehensive quality management system, have helped organizations achieve the highest levels of performance.

Learning objectives:

Describe some of the health reform pressures on healthcare
Describe attributes of successful performance
Explain how lean Six Sigma methods and principles support the pursuit of excellence
Provide applied examples
Provide a tool for attendees to assess their organization’s readiness for lean Six Sigma

Journey to High Value Healthcare: The New Role of Process Improvement

Pam Arlotto, President and CEO, Maestro Strategies
9-9:45 a.m.

The high value healthcare system of the future will focus on outcomes improvement, cost reduction and integration of clinical services. The interoperable patient-centered record, health information exchange and personal health records will be the foundation for this future healthcare system. This session is designed to inform healthcare leaders of the eight strategies needed to integrate care across the continuum, the information platforms required to support new models of care delivery and the role of process improvement in designing this future healthcare system.

Learning objectives:

Identify future trends electronic health records, health information exchange, and personal health records, and their connection to accountable care and value-based payment
Explore eight strategies for the journey
Define the role of process improvement in high value healthcare
Provide self-assessment questions for executive teams

Best Practices from the Healthcare Systems Process Improvement Conference 2012

Amanda Mewborn, Senior Healthcare Operational Planner, Perkins+Will
10-10:45 a.m.

Missed the 2012 Healthcare Systems Process Improvement Conference? No sweat! Amanda has compiled the best practices presented at the conference and will share a summary of the best of two days’ worth of learning in only 45 minutes.

Learning objectives:

Explain the difference between lean and Six Sigma and situations that warrant use of each tool.
Describe lean and Six Sigma concepts and provide examples of use of the concepts in healthcare environments.
Discuss at least three healthcare examples of lean and Six Sigma best practices presented at the 2012 Healthcare Systems Process Improvement Conference.

Inpatient Progression of Care Value Stream - Is Smooth Patient Progression Possible?

Ellen Ermer, Continuous Improvement Engineer, and Ginny Schoffelman, R.N., John C. Lincoln Health Network
10:45-11:30 a.m.

The healthcare world has been struggling with implementing inpatient flow or inpatient progression of care processes, from admission to discharge, that are safe, effective, and focus on the needs of the patient. Speak to any hospital and you will hear how the patient care pathway is complex, full of waste and many bottlenecks that create barriers to a smooth patient progression of care or patient flow. In this session you will hear about the challenges, lessons learned, and results from three workshops within a value stream that have been completed to address inpatient flow through the system. These three projects involved nurses, physicians and ancillary staff involvement in the design, implementation, and sustainment of the process changes.

Learning objectives:

Involvement of staff in designing, implementing, and sustaining the changes for improvement
Charge RN development and creation of standard work for all staff
Impact on patient discharge readiness
Improved results on the ability to move an admitted patient in the emergency department to the floor
Results on improved ability to have the room assigned and ready for the patient when admitted
The challenges of working with a contracted physician group

Luncheon and Keynote Presentation

Alan Kent, President and CEO, Meadows Regional Medical Center
12-12:45 p.m.

Innovating the Care Management Process with Simplexity Thinking© and Lean

Jean Ann Larson, principal, JALarson & Associates; president, SHS Board of Directors
12:45-1:30 p.m.

This session presents a new approach utilized with a diverse team of process experts from a pediatric health system to innovatively design future processes to meet the needs of key patient populations as part of the implementation of an ACO. It engaged over 100 core team, solution and implementation team members to complete a rapid process design within three months. The methodology employs simple questions that began with, “How might we creatively design the process to meet the needs of all patients?”

Learning objectives:

Describe how diverse creativity and innovation styles lead to more robust problem-solving

Improvement of Admission Time: From Time of Order to Patient Placement

Judy H. Shepard, R.N., Director, Quality & Bed Management, Grady Memorial Hospital
1:30-2:15 p.m.

Currently Grady Healthcare is experiencing significant delays in bed placement, from the time an order for admission is written to the time the patient is occupying a bed. Utilizing lean principles, this project will focus on the reduction of this time frame from an average of two hours to one hour.

Managing Nursing In-Quality Staffing to Meet Clinical Quality and Financial Objectives

Lynn Alters
2:30-3:15 p.m.

The presentation will provide an overview of how inpatient staffing matrices were redesigned to meet both clinical and financial targets for in-quality staffing and the importance of the following three key staffing processes of planning the work, working the plan and measuring success. The presentation will also demonstrate how workforce management tools and data reporting support a variety of teams within the health system.

Learning objectives:

What does the term in-quality mean in staffing for patient care?
Utilizing Excel to create staffing matrices and applied as a variable workforce management tool
Creating baseline staffing plans to meet variable workload needs
Identifying hidden labor costs and strategies for reducing
Applying lean principles to labor management

Process to Ensure Evidence-Based Order Sets

Babs McKnight, Senior Director Clinical Transformation, Columbus Regional Hughston Hospital & The Medical Center and Doctor's Hospital
3:15-4 p.m.

This session is about using lean principles in the development of evidence-based order sets. A team of physicians, nurses, pharmacists, informatics and medical librarians have developed a standardized process for the creation and development of order sets. The focus was to develop the clinical content, validating best practices and implementing on paper, prior to CPOE being introduced to the organization. There was significant concern that a standardized and structured approach would actually improve care and concern that in fact development would slow down the order set creation. There was also concern that having a multidisciplinary team challenging the physicians to standardize would not be supported by the community medical staff. The phase one CPOE project focused on women and children's services. Thirteen original order sets were to be developed. In the development of these sets, the process developed and then used identified two significant clinical treatment issues that without the standardized approach would not have been identified.

Closing Remarks

Larry Aft, P.E., Director of Continuing Education and Program Development, IIE