Are You Missing Your Best Quality Improvement Ideas?

Last month I talked about keeping your quality improvement changes in place

using a manual that you develop of SOPs, standard operating procedures. By the

way, if you missed that issue, you can find it on my website, and several earlier ones

too.

This month I want to address starting a quality improvement project. That is, how

do you decide what project to work on? What issue or process is causing the most

waste, is doing the most harm, is most affecting the bottom line? Maybe you are a

leader at your site and you have an idea of what is generally causing problems. For

instance, you may think that patients with catheters are getting a lot of infections.

Perhaps, checking patients in at your site is taking too long and creating a

bottleneck. Maybe patients are complaining about having to wait too long at check

in at a doctors office. It could be that certain departments are running short of

supplies too often. There are many other possibilities. The probability is that

unless you are directly involved in the contentious process, you probably are not

aware of what the exact problems are and are not aware of possible solutions.

This leads us to the conclusion that in order to discover the many problems facing

every organization, especially in terms of wasted effort, time and money, there has

to be in place a mechanism for the problems to surface to the leaders from the front

lines of the organization. There has to be a way for the leaders to hear about the

problems from those who are directly involved. For instance, does anyone in your

organization know what ideas the cleaning staff has for making the organization

better? When I say that there has to be a way for the ideas to surface, I dont mean

that the only ones with a voice should be nursing staff and other professionals.

Rather, as in the Baldrige Improvement Plans, the entire staff is involved in quality

improvement.

I know of a few hospitals where the leadershippresident, CFO, COO, etc.go out

several mornings every week to talk to staff at all levels and patients to see how

things could be better and to get some positive feedback about what things are

going well. Perhaps at your site you want to start something like this. As time goes

by and as suggestions are implemented, staff will feel safer about making

suggestions.

Leadership needs to make sure that staff feel safe about making suggestions, no

matter what the method of suggesting changes is used. Perhaps you might want to

use an anonymous survey for collecting initial suggestions. After some of the

suggestions are acted upon, the staff will feel like the leaders really want good ideas

and will feel safer making them known. Perhaps you might want to use a consultant

in Lean Healthcare (many of these ideas I suggest come directly from Lean

Healthcare) to teach the staff the principles and processes of Lean Healthcare and

other tools as may seem fit. This approach will help a large organization start

making many positive changes quickly, rather than using the idea of slowly

spreading the means of change throughout an organization, as some prefer.

Whatever your initial process of getting the ideas percolating up in the organization,

after some ideas for quality improvement recommended by the rank and file are

successfully implemented and after the improvements and savings are made known

in the organization, it is time to create ways to get more ideas. Perhaps you want to

have regular meetings with a designated leader and representatives from several

staffing areas that will bring up ideas. That means that the rest of the staff must

feel comfortable about making suggestions to these team members. If your site has

few employees, then perhaps it would be best to have regular staff meetings with all

employees where the agenda always includes time for quality improvement ideas

and for updates on ongoing projects. Whatever method you decide works best for

your site, be sure that an atmosphere safety and security exists for all the staff.

This may mean going so far as to guarantee that no staff will lose there position as

improvements create more time to get things done.

So, once you have a steady flow of quality improvement ideas being generated by all

in the organization, which ones should you act upon? Next month, Ill address that

issue. This issue I decided to concentrate on the Define step of Six Sigmas DMAIC

(define, measure, act, improve, control). Next, I will discuss the measure segment.

Sometime in the future Ill cover team dynamics too.

Donald Bryant helps healthcare providers meet their challenges. If you liked

this article and want more free tips, visit

http://www.bryantsstatisticalconsulting.com for a free article to help you start

making improvements at your site immediately.

How Can You Create a Healthy Healthcare Organization? Treat It Like a Patient!
Quality improvement should be a system-wide initiative. Many healthcare facilitiesthink of quality only as it applies to the clinical side. They conce...

The 6 Steps To Six Sigma
The First Step - Executive TrainingThe very first step for implementing Six Sigma in an organization is to ensure that executives at all levels are co...

Thinking Statistically With Six Sigma
Gathering, Classifying And Analyzing DataIn order to make the most appropriate changes, Six Sigma professionals first gather huge amounts of data rela...

Communication Networks
Connecting with people and their ideas is a crucial part of management and business, but does the way we connect reduce our chances of reaching our go...

How To Select The Appropriate Performance Indicator?
"If you cannot measure it, you cannot control it" so goes the adage. But the question is often, measure and control what? There are performance indica...

Importance Of Six Sigma In The Business World
Better Than TQMSix Sigma is important because it scores much higher over other quality improvement techniques such as TQM. Business organizations empl...

How Do I Find Discount Gym Equipment
A great way to get that new gym you've been looking for is to find home gyms at yard sales. This opportunity is a great one that is often overlooked. ...

Change vs. Improvement - Movement Does Not Denote Progress
The words "change" and "improve," are easy to misuse. Since change is essential to improve, it can be a common mistake to assume that change equals i...

Making The Most of HR KPI
Any company in just about any type of industry aims to have its workforce made up of employees who are very productive. In ensuring this high level of...

Want to Make Tremendous Gains at Your Healthcare Site? Use Process Mapping!
I want to tell you some ways to eliminate waste at your medical site. Am I talkingabout physical waste, like soiled bandages or used needles? No, I ...

HTC S730 Review - What’s the Difference? Plenty Actually!
The combination of dual keypads and the Windows Mobile 6 OS made the S710 a great alternative to the typical smartphones on the market which the marke...

The Positive Approach To Six Sigma
Let's discuss what a Six Sigma initiative is. To put in layman's terms, it is all about improving the capabilities of the business processes by reduci...

Six Sigma Quality Control Certification
The new emphasis on quality is why businesses have now become more concerned about maintaining the quality of products and services than ever before. ...

The Inquiry Skill - Ask What They Think
Employees want to feel appreciated and listened to and to be involved and informed. That is, they want (and need) open two-way communication with thei...

OEE
Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) is a concept utilized in a lean manufacturing implementation.The OEE concept normally measures the effectiveness...