Solutions. Success. Results.

Lean Healthcare is fast becoming the premier strategy for responding to North America’s healthcare crisis. Adapted from the Toyota Production System, Lean methods of improving quality and safety while eliminating waste are showing dramatic, sustained benefits when applied in healthcare.

As led by Healthcare Performance Partners* (HPP), Lean Healthcare is not just another project: it’s a way to transform your entire organization into a high-quality, high-performing Lean healthcare delivery system. And it quickly delivers bottom-line results.

Lean Healthcare Consultants and Trainers

HPP and its affiliate, Lean Healthcare West [add link], have assembled an array of Lean Healthcare Consultants and Trainers of unparalleled depth and experience. HPP and its parent company, The Access Group (TAG), already have an impressive, decade-long track record of successful Lean implementation and training at several major American corporations throughout the world.

But in addition to Lean Six Sigma black belts and engineers with first-hand experience in Toyota shop-floor methods, HPP staff also includes physicians, nurses, physician assistants, and healthcare administrators. As a team and as individuals, these Lean Healthcare Consultants and Trainers have spent years perfecting the application and teaching of these principles in a wide variety of health care settings.

Together we can build your organization’s core Lean Healthcare competencies in a way that becomes self-sustaining after our engagement ends. We will tailor a practical, focused approach that quickly generates enthusiasm among your staff, and sustainable improvements that yield a rapid return on your investment.

We’ll help you set the stage for amplifying those bottom-line results into the future.

Lean Healthcare Services

HPP is a proven Lean Healthcare industry resource, providing:

• Lean Healthcare Training Programs
• Value Stream Mapping
• 5- S projects
• A3 Thinking

• Lean Healthcare Kaizen events
• Six Sigma/Lean Healthcare integration
• Lean Healthcare Conferences
• Lean Healthcare Architectural Design Support Services
• Lean Facility Design and Maintenance

Lean Healthcare Transformational Services

After years of independently bringing the most experience in Lean Healthcare to its clients, in 2006 Healthcare Performance Partners (HPP) joined forces with Lean Healthcare West to create the most comprehensive package of proven TPS/Lean Healthcare services available anywhere. HPP’s new dual approach—featuring innovative education and targeted rapid improvement—has already helped dozens of clients throughout North America build internal competency and sustainability while guiding staff in fixing critical problems through rapid improvement and daily problem-solving.

Our objective is to help your organization realize both immediate and long-term results while making Lean Healthcare a way of life long after our engagement ends. As the journey progresses, you will note rapid, dramatic—and measurable—improvements to processes, staff morale, and the bottom line.

Here is the Lean Healthcare transformational sequence that has proven most successful in the hospitals in which we have recently implemented TPS/Lean:

1. Senior leadership education/organizational planning. Your Lean transformation journey begins with thoughtful consultation, planning, and communication, and careful preparation of the leadership team. This is not only essential to determine the leadership commitment and engagement, and to establish a realistic goal for implementation. Organizational success with this program depends completely on alignment of senior leadership direction, understanding and participation.
2. Middle management education. Generally a full-day retreat event that includes a presentation by the CEO to establish this work as a priority, and education to initiate the understanding and implementation of the system.
3. Kaizen events. Guided by HPP’s team of expert on-site coaches, the team jump-starts the work on the ground with an event known as Kaizen, a Japanese term meaning “change for the better.” This 5-day event involves the entire staff in a high-value area or service line that justifies a significant commitment of resources. With guidance, 6 to 12 frontline staff members delve deeply and immediately into a process, learning to discover and correct problems with a series of activities that create enthusiasm, impact, and data-driven results.
4. Comprehensive Lean Healthcare training that encompasses everyone from top managers to frontline staff. Lean Healthcare training builds momentum along with the understanding that these techniques yield something for everyone. HPP training includes:

   • reVIEW®, (realizing exceptional Value In Everyday Work), an 8-week session (two days/week) helping participants view work as a “system,” rather than a series of tasks. Participants in this class, usually a mix of frontline workers and middle- and upper-level managers, apply what they learn directly to the work they are doing. It’s this “systems thinking,” a new way of doing work that differentiates Lean from all other improvement “projects,” which often arrive with fanfare and later tend to evaporate.

     Ideally, over time each unit develops at least two strong “coaches”, to whom the staff looks for problem solving assistance and whose responsibilities ensure that no problem goes unaddressed or unreported.

     HPP offers an instructor course to teach key staff members how to teach the reVIEW© Course internally. Over this advanced 8-week session instructors co-teach and co-coach alongside HPP experts, building confidence and independence. HPP makes course materials for new instructors, helping you create your own turn-key Lean Healthcare training program.

   • Value stream mapping, delineating how your process actually works, and how it ought to. This visual approach to identifying glitches is simple in concept, but revolutionary in the clarity it adds for the entire staff. Value stream mapping helps people discover what part of the problem will yield the fastest results.
   • A-3 thinking, a simple but intense method of analyzing problems and solving them, one by one. The A-3, a simple piece of paper divided into problem-solving segments, helps organize and closely focus what is known about the problem, and outlines experiments in solving it
   • 5-S events to introduce efficient, standardized and visual workplace organization.
5. Additional assistance, which can be specifically designed for your organization, including:
   • Process standardization and visual workplace design
   • Mistake proofing development and Poka-Yoke tools
   • Changeover optimization of rooms and resources
   • Six Sigma healthcare projects (HPP Black Belt trained associates)
   • Lean Healthcare and Six Sigma integrations
   • Lean Metrics design & development
   • Pull systems and “Flow” healthcare solutions
   • Visual workplace design
   • Simulation tools for new processes
   • Quality solutions
6. External Coaching. In addition to Lean/Six Sigma black belts and engineers with first-hand experience in Toyota shop-floor methods, HPP staff also includes physicians, nurses, physician assistants, and healthcare administrators. These staff members are available to act as coaches for complex problems or when an organization is ready to take a step to the “next level.”

For more information about bringing Lean to your healthcare organization contact us at: chagood@hpp.bz or call (615) 206-0191

Lean Healthcare Services

With the objective of recognizing and eliminating waste and errors through improving the processes that support defect-free healthcare delivery, our organization offers leadership guidance and organizational education that can assist you to move to a better operational place.

In 2006 Healthcare Performance Partner, joined forces with Lean Healthcare West creating HPPLHW, LLC which offers clients a complete package of proven TPS/Lean services. Results of the combined approaches of education and targeted rapid improvement have reinforced the success of joint efforts to build internal competency and sustainability with the reVEIW© Course and guide client staff to fix critical problems now with Rapid improvement Kaizen events.

This approach is unique in the Lean Healthcare industry, offered by our experienced Lean practitioners with backgrounds in both Healthcare and Industry. Your organization will realize immediate and long term results while making Lean a way of conducting daily work. The enthusiasm of staff for adopting Lean with this method is both gratifying to observe and improvements can be objectively measured.

Here is the pattern that has proven most successful in the hospitals in which we have recently implemented TPS/Lean:

1. Senior leadership education/organizational planning

• This is not only essential to determine the leadership commitment and engagement, and to establish a realistic goal for implementation. Organizational success with this program depends completely on alignment of senior leadership direction, understanding and participation.

2. Middle management education

• Generally a full-day retreat event that includes a presentation by the CEO to establish this work as a priority, and education to initiate the understanding and implementation of the system.

3. Kaizen events

• 5-day events that focus on one high value "process" that justifies a significant commitment of resources. With goals of reducing waste, frustration and improving service to patients; 6-12 front line staff and key stakeholders directly involved with the work selected will be guided through the "process" discovery and correction process. Thorough work process understanding and data collection our staff will assist client staff in this endeavor.

4. reVIEW© Course 8-week session (two day/week); includes:

• 14 hours of participant training (maximum 16 participants/course), conducted two hours/week over a seven week period, in which participants are given assignments to apply the principles and tools learned to something that pertains to their current work; each week’s lesson scaffolds on the previous week and participants produce real improvements while they learn the process and develop habits that will contribute to economizing their work
• One-on-one coaching of the participants with the work they have chosen for the course; this assures that participants are clear on the concepts and that they receive individual assistance applying what they’ve learned to the work they have chosen to improve
• A 4-hour coaching class to prepare willing/chosen graduates of the participant course to coach co-workers through the problem solving process

Choosing the first course participants is critical in starting the program on solid ground; generally a mix of upper and middle management, educators, quality and risk management and frontline staff assures that all levels of the organization get involved, which is essential in establishing independence and sustainability. Ideally, over time each unit will develop at least 2 strong “coaches”, to whom the staff looks for problem solving assistance and whose responsibilities will be to insure that no problem goes unaddressed or unreported and that improvement activities are generated.

Additionally, HPPLHW offers our customers the capacity to teach the reVIEW© Course internally. We offer a subsequent instructor course (up to 2 instructors from the graduates of the each course of 16 participants) and another 8-week session to allow instructors to co-teach and co-coach with us to build confidence and independence. On completion of the co-teaching and co-coaching, qualified instructors will be certified to teach the course in your own institution. All course materials have been developed and used by HPPLHW staff and are available to new instructors to make this a complete turn-key program.

Our staff assists the customer organization in planning future courses to define growth of Lean activities through the organization. This definition insures rigor, regularity and involvement as Lean takes hold in an organization.

5. External Coaching

• HPPLHW’s staff of Lean-experienced engineers, manufacturers and health care innovators are available to act as coaches for complex problems or when an organization is ready to take a step to the “next level”.

For more information about bringing Lean to your healthcare organization contact us at: chagood@hpp.bz or call (615) 206-0191

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“The HPP team's ability to achieve buy-in from our management team and our Associates was a key factor in the success of our Lean Healthcare initiatives.” William T. Sugg, President & CEO Sumner Regional Health Systems

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