LEAN IN HEALTHCARE

The adoption of Lean principles into healthcare is continuing to gain ground and converts as those early adopters of ‘doing more with less’ have seen significant improvements to their internal processes resulting in reduced wait times, higher patient satisfaction and improved employee morale. It is no surprise then that as Canada faces the prospect of healthcare spending that, if left unchecked, threatens to consume an unsustainable share of public expenditure, Lean is being embraced as a means of both improving efficiency and reining in costs.

Attend this event and learn:

• The benefits of adopting Lean and the challenges involved in implementation
• The business case for Lean
• How Lean can transform the ED and set the stage for a hospital-wide Lean initiative
• How the ALC placement process can be improved with Lean
• The latest on developing a comprehensive framework for evaluating Lean
• How the Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative is using Lean to improve healthcare safety and quality
• The physician’s perspective on Lean healthcare

PROGRAM CHAIR

Mary Ackenhusen
Chief Operating Officer, Vancouver
Vancouver Coastal Health

KEYNOTE ADDRESSES

Taking Lean Province-Wide: Saskatchewan’s Story

Trish Livingstone
Director, Health System Quality and Efficiency Management
Policy and Planning Branch
Saskatchewan Ministry of Health

Getting Results from Lean: Improving Patient Safety and Satisfaction; Improving the Bottom Line

Stephen Brown
Assistant Deputy Minister, British Columbia Ministry of Health Services

MAINTENANCE OF CERTIFICATION

Attendance at this program entitles certified Canadian College of Health Service Executives members (CHE / Fellow) to 5.5 Category II credits toward their maintenance of certification requirement.

Bronze Sponsor

Marketing Partner

• CEOs
• Senior Administrators
• Medical Directors
• Chiefs of Staff
• Directors and Managers of:
  • performance improvement
  • safety and quality
  • operations
  • corporate services
  • clinical care

• And:
  
• Healthcare Consultants
• Educators
• Researchers
• Ministers / Deputy Ministers
• Public Policy Analysts /Advisors

• From:
  
• Health Regions
• Hospitals
• Regional and Community Health Centres
• Private and Public Laboratories
• Diagnostic Imaging Services
• Provincial Ministries of Health
• Health Canada
• Professional Associations and Colleges

Dear Colleague:

Healthcare in Canada is at a crossroads. A confluence of trends has led to a situation where more effective delivery of health services is the only option. Continuing budgetary restraint, an aging population and shrinking numbers of healthcare professionals due to retirement together represent significant challenges for administrators and professionals and their goal of continuing to deliver the same level of health services. As healthcare spending threatens to consume an ever-increasing percentage of provincial GDP, how stakeholders respond over the next few years will have a very tangible impact on our ability to maintain the integrity of our public system.

Yet Canadians will still expect safe, high quality care to be available when they and their families need it. Achieving this on a sustainable basis will require innovation and some experimentation – in short – a new approach to the way delivery of services is conceived and executed. There have been different initiatives launched over the past few years with the aim of improving patient safety, service quality and accountability, many of which have been successful. However, it is the introduction of Lean principles into the healthcare sector that may show the greatest potential for sustainable improvement. Already in B.C. several healthcare organizations have used Lean to transform their operations and discovered that not only does it boost efficiency but also staff morale.

This conference, produced by Insight Information, offers an exceptional opportunity to hear what other healthcare professionals are doing with Lean in their organizations and participate in interactive discussion concerning its future as it continues to gain converts with its transformative impact on the delivery of healthcare services in Canada. It’s one you won’t want to miss.

Sincerely,

Mary Ackenhusen
Chief Operating Officer, Vancouver
Vancouver Coastal Health

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

8:15

Registration and Coffee

9:00

Welcoming Remarks from Insight Information

9:05

Opening Remarks from the Chair

Mary Ackenhusen 
Chief Operating Officer, Vancouver
Vancouver Coastal Health

9:15

Getting Results from Lean: Improving Patient Safety and Satisfaction; Improving the Bottom Line

Stephen Brown 
Assistant Deputy Minister
British Columbia Ministry of Health Services

9:45

Applying Lean to Healthcare: Benefits, Challenges and Future Strategy

Michele Zielinski
Vice President of Clinical Performance Improvement
Alberta Health Services

Jennifer MacKenzie
Vice President, Strategic Planning, Transformation Support and Innovation
Provincial Health Services Authority

Dr. Michel Tétreault 
President & Chief Executive Officer
St. Boniface General Hospital, Winnipeg

Dr. Anthony Fields
Vice-President, Cancer Care
Alberta Health Services

This session brings together top executives from different types of organizations at varying stages in their Lean journey to share both their expectations of Lean at the beginning and their experience during and after the implementation phase.

• Why Lean is being considered now
• What public policy issues need to be addressed?
• What initiatives are currently underway with Lean as part of government agenda?
• What organizational issues need to be addressed?
  • how was Lean first approached?
  • as an experiment?
  • was a decision made from the beginning to adopt Lean
• Government-sponsored initiatives
• How was implementation approached?
  • by department, or organization-wide?
• Overall experience to date
• The 2008 restructuring of health service governance within Alberta presented a unique opportunity to evaluate and integrate the delivery of services to over 3 million residents
• The AHS Improvement Method, currently under development using Lean Systems Thinking along with other improvement methodology as its base, will provide the vehicle for AHS to achieve its goal for Care Transformation

11:00

Networking Coffee Break

11:15

The Business Case for Lean

Dr. Michel Tétreault 
President & Chief Executive Officer
St. Boniface General Hospital, Winnipeg

• Greater patient safety – more reliable outcomes and fewer adverse events
• Greater patient satisfaction – staff and physician engagement
• Increasing value from patient perspective
• ROI / managing human and financial resources

12:00

Networking Luncheon

1:15

Transforming the ED

Karin Olson
Director of Acute Services
Lions Gate Hospital

Cynthia Startup
Manager of Emergency and Trauma
Lions Gate Hospital

• Improving patient flow and quality of care
• How St. Paul’s tackled their problems of patient bottlenecks, staff frustration and patient dissatisfaction
• Challenges encountered
• Understanding how the ED can be the beginning of a hospital-wide initiative

2:15

Improving Turnaround Times in the Lab

Malcolm Francis
Professional Practice Leader, Pathology
Providence Healthcare Vancouver

Pat Johnston
Regional Laboratory Manager
Interior Health

Lean principles were first introduced into the Chemistry and Hematology Core Laboratory at St. Paul’s Hospital, Providence Health Care, in 2004. Over the past six years we have been successful in reducing turnaround times by 40%. However Lean is not a destination, it’s a journey. It requires continuous monitoring to maintain and sustain the improvements. This session will examine the following:

• Why consider Lean to improve turnaround times?
• How Chemistry and Hematology at St. Paul’s Hospital used Lean as a tool for improving turnaround times
• Key implementation challenges
• Key implementation success
• Importance of promoting staff involvement and participation in the process
• Importance of involving other departments in the process
• Reflections and next steps

3:15

Networking Refreshment Break

3:30

Evaluating Lean Health Care Initiatives: Development of a Comprehensive Framework

Martin L. Puterman
Research Director
UBC Centre for Health Care Management
Advisory Board Professor of Operations
Sauder School of Business

• Challenges of evaluating Lean in a health care setting
• Capturing the entire scope of the Lean initiative
• Data challenges; developing rigorous data collection methods and obtaining system level data
• Rigor vs. Efficacy

4:15

Improving the ALC Placement Process with Lean

Kim Kendrick
Franchise Partner
Nurse Next Door Home Healthcare Services

Objective – Coordinating patient flow from acute care hospitals to homecare through a Lean perspective:

• Current causes of patient delays in the ALC placement process
• Current impacts of ALC patients through the lens of our customers
• Future state of ALC
• Bridging the gap: ALC to homecare
• A successful transition profile from ALC to homecare

5:00

Conference Adjourns for the Day

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

9:00

Welcome from the Chair

Mary Ackenhusen
Chief Operating Officer, Vancouver
Vancouver Coastal Health

9:15

Taking Lean Province-Wide: Saskatchewan’s Story

Trish Livingstone
Director, Health System Quality and Efficiency Management
Policy and Planning Branch
Saskatchewan Ministry of Health

9:45

Approaching Lean on a Region-Wide Basis

Rena van der Wal 
Executive Director: Staffing Innovation/Lean Transformation Services
Human Resources
Vancouver Coastal Health

• Discussion of several initiatives in progress using Lean thinking
• Business processes – integrating business services across three health regions
• Disability management across
• Recruitment
• Clinical processes – standardizing clinical processes across 6 acute care hospitals within a health region
• Acute care patient flow in mental health
• Challenges, opportunities, and learning

10:30

Networking Coffee Break

10:45

Using Lean to Improve Healthcare Safety and Quality: The Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative

Karen Wolk Feinstein, PhD
President and Chief Executive Officer
Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative

This session will address key considerations for delivery-system redesign. Slow to adopt industrial engineering techniques, health organizations have an abundance of process improvement opportunities. So, key questions loom large: where should early change efforts focus; what are highly promising areas for intervention (the low hanging fruit); how can we enlist and train internal champions and lead change agents; how can safety, efficiency, and clinical goals be addressed simultaneously; what are the challenges of spreading best practices beyond “islands of excellence”; and how to take Lean thinking and behaviour beyond the hospital to skilled nursing and primary care partners for accountable care?

• Where should Lean improvements begin
• Who should lead change
• How can safety, efficiency and clinical excellence be addressed simultaneously
• The challenge of spread and sustainability within hospitals
• The challenge of spreading Lean to skilled nursing and primary care partners

11:30

Lean from the Ground Up: Incorporating Lean into Facility Design

Robert Breen
Chief Project Officer
Provincial Health Services Authority
BC Children’s and Women’s Redevelopment

Rudi van den Broek 
Chief Project Officer & General Manager Special Projects
Vancouver Island Health Authority

• What are the objectives of utilizing Lean in new facility design?
• What is the business case?
• How can process improvement techniques be used BEFORE a process exists?
• What is the best way to conceptualize new processes? How do those concepts become programs? Adjacencies and areas? Design?
• What is the impact of incorporating Lean principles into the design of a facility? What changes?
• Is wide scale incorporation of Lean disruptive and, if so, does the business case justify that disruption?

12:15

Networking Luncheon

1:30

Learnings and Insights from 35 Lean Hospital Transformations

Dylan Hardy
Managing Director
HIO Group

• Overview of approach and toolkit to improve patient flow
• Breaking the myths using a data driven approach
• 10 key areas of opportunity across the patient journey
• The Achilles’ Heel: Ensuring sustainability
• Developing Lean capabilities within your hospital
• Measuring the impact – summary of learnings

2:15

The Physicians’ Perspective on Lean Healthcare

Dr. Nadia Zalunardo MD, SM, FRCP(C)
Clinical Assistant Professor
UBC Division of Nephrology
Vancouver General Hospital

• Physicians as stakeholders – what can they contribute?
• Lean as a physician engagement strategy
• Cultural obstacles to Lean within the medical community and how to approach them

3:00

Networking Refreshment Break

Sponsored by

3:15

Reducing Wait Times, Improving Quality and Safety with Lean VIHA Case Study, Cataract Surgery

Carla Service, BScN, MPA, CHE
Manager, Surgical Ambulatory Clinics and Regional Pain Program
Vancouver Island Health Authority

Lean design strategies, 5 Ss and value/waste stream mapping were applied to a Cataract Surgery Clinic setting, which resulted in:

• A 33% increase in volume (1400) cases using the same resources and exceeding wait time targets
• Savings of $450,000 in anesthetist’s fee-for-service/year
• Freeing up anesthetist resources for the Main OR

This presentation will cover introduction, goals, interventions, results and conclusions.

4:00

Utilizing the Right Tool for the Job (Lean, Six Sigma and other Quality Initiatives)

Ann Brown
Change Leader, Change Initiatives
Providence Health Care

Vivienne Welters 
Executive Director, Pacific Region
National Quality Institute

• Dealing with too much, too fast!
• Getting organized for success using NQI’s proven Frameworks for Excellence
• Building process skills while you do everything else
• Progressing one step at a time to sustain improvement!

Jo Suria
Lean Leader
Nurse Next Door

Value Stream Mapping is a simple tool used in Lean for streamlining a process with maximum results.

• Current state Value Stream Mapping – how to analyze the current process and identify opportunities for improvement
• Future state Value Stream Mapping – how to design a new process that is more efficient by applying Lean principles
• Time value analysis – this will reveal the opportunity to eliminate waste
• Gap analysis – how to put together action items to bridge the gap between current state and future state
• Root cause analysis – how to get to the root cause of the problem by asking why 3 to 5 times
• Value graph – this will help participants to prioritize action items based on effort and value.

5:00

Register 3 delegates for the main conference at regular price at the same time and you’re entitled to register a fourth person from your organization at no charge. For other group discounts, please call 1-888-777-1707. All discounts must be redeemed when booking, discounts will not be valid or applied after this time.