Operations Improvement

Challenge | An Emergency Department of a large hospital system was struggling with its operational performance. This department suffered serious delays - well beyond the corporate mandated standard - for a patient to arrive on a unit after an admission decision was made. Delays caused a loss in revenue and significant patient and family dissatisfaction with the process.

DCG Solution | After a stakeholder planning session, the client and DCG agreed to use a combination of process improvement techniques including Kaizen Events and Lean Methodologies. DCG organized a set of Kaizen Events to capture relevant hypotheses, prioritize and document the hypotheses and confirm opportunity statements and action plans. Next, DCG performed Failure Mode Effect Analysis and defined the desired future state process. DCG then led implementation of the future state process, established statistical controls, and identified additional process improvements based on follow-up Kaizen workshops.

Value | The average admit decision to unit time was reduced by 40%, bringing the process into tight statistical control and allowing for highly predictable and repeatable performance. DCG also created a daily dashboard that allowed leadership to keep a regular “pulse” on each component of the process. The new processes became the “gold standard” and were adopted system wide.