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A Life Worth Living
And Let There Be "Lean"
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Back in August we wrote about a new "Lean" philosophy that was popping up on the horizon and was challenging the more astute organizations and their leaders to strive for higher levels of efficiency. It carries with it a new connotation. It demands a mind-set of "Let's get serious about change and continuous improvement". This new "Lean" invokes efficiency, empowered employees proactively improving operations and processes, elimination of waste, and a fine-tuned, engaged, goal driven organization.Just as this "Lean" philosophy is increasingly being viewed as hope for the competitive problems of the somewhat beleaguered manufacturing industry, we felt confident in expecting similar efficiencies in the health care, hospitality, education, banking and infrastructure sectors.
Although we had elaborated earlier on the success that the Kingston General Hospital had with this approach, we were pleased to read in the October 29th publication of the Chatham Daily News that success with the "Lean" philosophy is flourishing right here in Chatham-Kent.
In the article titled "Project Discovers Efficiencies", the Chatham-Kent Health Alliance is highlighted for the progress they are making under the direction of the Michigan Manufacturing Technology Center. The hospital's tri-board was recently treated to a presentation on lean business solutions, as well as "Six Sigma". If you are not familiar with Six Sigma and statistical problem solving, that is what helped Bombardier go from making Ski-doos to making passenger airliners.
Linda McGivern, CKHA Manager of utilization and performance improvement, outlined in the article various measures and projects underway. Ken Tremblay, CKHA President and CEO stated that they were seeing more and more projects being mobilized.
Getting serious about adopting this "Lean" philosophy can be a challenge to the indigenous culture of hierarchical and bureaucratic organizations. Having been involved in improving quality, efficiencies, and attitudes for much of our working life, we do not expect this new wave of direction to suddenly envelope our health care system as we know it.
Although we have written of some positive successes, it is likely that few health care facilities have seriously considered this "lean" approach. That said, we are confident that virtually every health care provider, be it a hospital, nursing home, medical clinic or whatever can realize significant benefits and there is no time like the present to begin thinking about it.
Cathy and I look forward to the positive impacts this movement will eventually have on the Culture of Care in our health care institutions and on Our Life Worth Living.
A Life Worth Living started as a series of articles about our journey, Cathy's and mine, through a period in our life somewhat altered by the symptoms of Alzheimer disease. Having been known to take pen in hand on occasion, it seemed a way to convey my curiosity about the culture of care for those so afflicted to the households of loved ones who are on such a journey. In this column you will get travel updates as we go along as well as a view of various other matters of interest to seniors.
