Leveraging Lean in the Emergency Department

This book is part of a series of titles that are a spin-off of the Shingo Prize-winning book Leveraging Lean in Healthcare: Transforming Your Enterprise into a High Quality Patient Care Delivery System. Each book in the series focuses on a specific aspect of healthcare that has demonstrated significant process and quality improvements after a Lean implementation. Emergency departments have become notorious for long wait times and questionable quality of care. By adopting Lean manufacturing concepts, hospitals can turn the emergency department into a valuable service for the hospital and the community it serves. Leveraging Lean in the Emergency Department: Creating a Cost Effective, Standardized, High Quality, Patient-Focused Operation supplies a functional understanding of Lean emergency department processes and quality improvement techniques. It is ideal for healthcare executives, leaders, process improvement team members, and inquisitive frontline workers who want to implement and leverage Lean. Supplying detailed descriptions of Lean tools and methodologies, the book identifies powerful Lean solutions specific to the needs of the emergency department.The first section provides an overview of Lean concepts, tools, methodologies, and applications. The second section focuses on the application of Lean in the emergency department within the confines of the hospital or clinic. Presenting numerous examples, stories, case studies, and lessons learned, it examines the normal operation of each area in emergency departments and highlights the areas where typical problems occur. Next, the book walks readers through various Lean initiatives and demonstrates how Lean tools and concepts have been used to achieve lasting improvements to processes and quality of care. It also supplies actionable blueprints that readers can duplicate or modify for use in their own institutions. Illustrating leadership's role in achieving departmental goals, this book will provide you with a well-rounded understanding of how Lean can be ap

W. Protzman, III, MBA, CPM is a Shingo Prize-winning author and internationally renowned Lean consultant with over 31 years' experience in materials and operations management. He spent more than 13 years with AlliedSignal, now Honeywell, where he was an aerospace strategic operations manager and the first AlliedSignal Lean Master. He has received numerous special recognition and cost-reduction awards. Charles was an external consultant for DBED's World Class Maryland Consortium while he was with AlliedSignal. He had input into the resulting World Class Criteria document and assisted in the first three initial DBED World Class Company Assessments. Charles has taught students in Lean principles and Total Quality from all over the world. In November of 1997, Charles Protzman formed Business Improvement Group, LLC (B.I.G.). B.I.G. is located in Baltimore, Maryland and specializes in implementing Lean Thinking. Charles has spent the last 18 years implementing successful Lean product line conversions, kaizen events, and administrative business system improvements (transactional Lean) across the globe. Charles participated in numerous benchmarking and site visits including a two-week trip to Japan in June 1996 where he worked with Hitachi in a kaizen event. He is a Master facilitator and trainer in TQM, total quality speed, facilitation, career development, change management, benchmarking, leadership, systems thinking, high performance work teams, team building, Myers Briggs Styles Indicator, Lean thinking and supply chain management. He also participated in Baldridge Examiner and Six Sigma management courses. He was an assistant program manager during Desert Storm for the Patriot missile-to-missile fuse development and production program. Joyce Kerpchar, PA is a Shingo Prize-winning author and health care expert, with over 30 years of healthcare industry experience and currently serves as a director at Florida Hospital Orlando, which is part of the Adventist Health System, an acute-care, tertiary hospital caring for more than 1.5 million patients a year. She joined Florida Hospital in 2001, and has held a variety of roles, as interim director of strategic for surgical services, director of the Institute for Surgical Advancement, a senior consultant implementing Lean across the eight campuses in a variety of clinical departments, is a Six Sigma Black Belt and is a certified MBTI instructor, product and project manager roles developing and implementing software applications. She began her career as a board certified physician's assistant in cardiovascular and thoracic surgery and primary care medicine. Prior to joining Florida Hospital, she held a variety of administrative positions in healthcare-related industries, which included managed care operations and contracting for a PruCare/Prudential Healthcare who served 200,000 members in nine counties in Central Florida, Product Management for Avio Corporation, a provider of information technology for ambulatory healthcare organization, and was a partner in a consulting firm which specialized in business and market entry strategy for high tech start-ups. Ms. Kerpchar is passionate about leveraging Lean in healthcare processes, to eliminate waste and reduce errors, to improve the overall quality and reduce the cost of providing healthcare. Dr. George Mayzell, MD, MBA, FACP is the senior chief medical officer and chief clinical integration officer for Adventist Midwest Health. He joined the organization in January 2013 after serving as CEO of Health Choice and senior vice president of Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare in Memphis, Tenn. Dr. Mayzell has more than 30 years of experience in medicine and is a board certified internist and geriatrician. He received his medical degree from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and his MBA from Jacksonville University. He previously served as senior medical director of managed care for University of Florida and Shands Hospital. He spent more than 10 years with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida, working as regional medical director for care and quality and corporate managing medical director for pharmacy and care. Additionally, he has more than 10 years of practice experience. Mayzell has co-authored two books, Leveraging Lean in Healthcare and Physician Alignment: Constructing Viable Roadmaps for the Future.