Essay Sample on Revolutionizing Healthcare: Less Waste, More Value, Better Outcomes

Introduction

The book "On the mend; Revolutionizing healthcare to save lives and transform the industry," was authored by John Toussaint, and Roger Gerard as his collaborator. The main purpose of the author is to create more value for the customers, in this case, the patients, with less waste of resources. This would involve providing medical services within the shortest time, and with limited defects, human effort, capital investment, and the associated injuries. Toussaint aims at achieving the above using the lean healthcare delivery systems that have much lower costs and provide much better-quality healthcare services. The process would incorporate primary care and developed supporting management systems that engage every employee.

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John Toussaint is a doctor, medical director, and a CEO who has engaged in a hands-on role in revolutionizing the rigorous approaches to improving the quality of medical services and slashing its associated waste and costs. He continuously engages in this quest to improve patient experiences across the medical enterprise. Roger Gerard on the other end is a ThedaCare expert in organizational learning and development who has focused on changing the management processes and established new leadership behaviors that are required to engage healthcare managers, doctors, nurses and support staff to better provide care while improving their working experience. The book improves the medical services delivery process by applying the lean healthcare process and three organizing principles, i.e., patient focus, time, and value, which are built upon the foundations of continuous advancement and respect for people. The work aligns with the themes of quality management and medical imaging by incorporating technology in its application, proper workflow design, equipment purchases and selection, quality control, and proper equipment maintenance and support among others.

Body of the Review

The three most important points raised by the authors on the process of lean healthcare are a focus on the patient, a focus on value, and time minimization. A focus on patients ensures that to create meaningful change, a medical practitioner has to have a closer look at what happens to the patients when they are at their worst moments. The evidence provided to support patient focus in medical centers is convincing. According to Toussaint & Roger, the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) is the most used strategy in hospitals that focuses on the flow of orders from the doctor to the nurse, and to the pharmacist. The working style results in a lack of communication and focus on the patient that originates from misguided or contradicting orders. The collaborative care, suggested by the authors, as a solution to the problem is believable as it completely alters the working lives of the doctors, pharmacists, and nurses by making them full partners in inpatient care. It redefines the roles and sets new standards. In the model, a physician, a pharmacist, and a nurse gather with the patient and the family within 90 minutes of admission to establish a care plan. Everyone takes part in the discussion and no one, including nurses and pharmacists, are left with illegible orders. The plan provides an informed prediction of the patient's hospital stay hence reduce medication errors.

A focus on value is concerned with the moment of value for the patient while minimizing the waste that surrounds that value. The evidence provided by the authors is convincing as they focus on looking closely at the work sequences while answering vital questions such as whether pharmacists should be at the pharmacy, or whether they should tend to pharmacological needs of the patients as part of the team, whether testing should be centralized on one lab, or whether it would be better for patients to perform simple routine tests at the bedside or in-patient care units among others. The solution provided is promising as it involves understanding what the patients truly value and are willing to pay for. This involves understanding that patients place a value on being accurately diagnosed, and not on the diagnostic tests. The solution involves continually examining the medical processes for improvement in line with the patient's requirements. The concept can be applied in various departments within the healthcare facility. The solutions are also believable as they also entail purchasing the appropriate equipment and maintaining them accordingly, ensuring that they are always prepared and having the right personnel at the right places, all of which are vital tenets to increasing the value of healthcare delivery.

Time minimization is another vital point in the implementation of lean healthcare processes. According to Toussaint & Gerard, the time to treatment is among the most critical factors that determine a patient's chance for recovery. Time minimization may be vital to control sensitive and serious medical conditions such as stroke and respiratory problems. However, while chronic disease management may be time-consuming, a well-designed pattern to appointments and patient needs may help to reduce hand-offs, consultations, and delays at the health facility and save time for the patients and costs for the providers. The solutions provided are believable, as they focus on aspects that contribute to time-wasting at the health facility and focus on mitigating them to ensure lean healthcare practices are adhered to. These include defect inspection, waiting for delivery of test results, motions, i.e., searching for supplies, transportation of patients, overproduction, i.e., excessive diagnostic testing, and over-processing among others. Proper mitigation of such acts would aid in reducing time-wasting in the delivery of medical care and therefore improve the lean healthcare processes.

The most effective part of the book is chapter six which focuses on leadership in the lean environment. This is because leadership forms the backbone that holds any system together and determines its success or failure. In this case, establishing, maintaining and attaining the required results of a lean healthcare process would not be possible without proper leadership in the lean environment despite having a well-structured lean healthcare process that discovers the principles of lean healthcare with engaging medical personnel. The success of ThedaCare health facility was pegged on the essential change in the management style at all levels of the organization to prevent backsliding, which plagues most organizations that try to become lean. The chapter argues that to ensure success in the implementation of the lean healthcare processes, there was a need to encourage a new style of leadership that listed and focused on the habits that lean leaders need to adopt. These include their focus on the seven essential areas of responsibility, safety, unity, improvement, teaching, customer-focus, and respect. The standard work for the leaders ensures transitioning from autocratic to collaborative management which entails full engagement in the lean work by embracing the tools that are consistent with the discipline of lean. All the parts of the book are effective in achieving the required objectives.

Conclusion

The book is well-structured to achieve its intended purpose, i.e., it highlights the requirements for an efficient lean healthcare system and enlists some of the changes that healthcare facilities can implement to efficiently transform their processes. The book can be practically used by other leaders who look to make improvements, as the models used and applied, are not restricted to the medical field in their entirety. The concepts are intertwined and can easily be used, customized, and implemented in any other business set-up just like they have been derived and fitted in the medical context to fit the objectives of the book. This means that the ideas and strategies presented in the book are easily transferrable to other institutions. However, the main barriers to their implementation is their exposure to industry-specific challenges, that would warrant continuous adjustment of the strategies to make them effective.

References

Toussaint, J. & Gerard, R. (2010). On the Mend; Revolutionizing healthcare to save lives and transform the industry. Lean Enterprise Institute