sixsigmadeewana

Patrick
Batching is always bad. The question in your scenario is: Is there enough reason for you to change the process? Is there a solid business case? Will it improve patient care significantly? Will it increase revenue?
If the answers to these questions are, No, No, Not a whole lot, not really…then you can ignore the LS notion of batching b…[Read more]

Bob
I think your thought process is correct. You need to understand the pain points for a healthcare organization. One of the key pain point is finance/revenue…surprisingly process issues are # 5 or # 7 issue but since you are interviewing for a lean opportunity you would want to focus on patient safety, improving patient flow, value stream…[Read more]

Brit
did you get any far on this project? we will be launching a pilot rounding process on one of our floors. big question for us is how will the nurses find time for this…
– Anoop

Dude
Get off that chair and do some research. Do you think we are here to solve your test questions.
 

GlenRN
Would you be willing to share any of those details with me? my email is [email protected]
Thanks
 

are we sounding like six sigma lawyers here? :)

Yes…we had them round 24/7….we had 1 sitter per shift for entire floor…Pilot floor had 2 units with a total of 30 beds….Our census for those 2 months was not significantly different than other months…
 

I think the way you use the sitters makes a difference. What worked for us is rounding on patients every 15-20 mins. So you dont need 1 sitter per patient, but 1 sitter or rounder per floor. We tried it for 2 months and showed decrease in falls from 6 per month to 1 per month.
Freeing up the nurses is probably the best approach, but with the…[Read more]

Frankly, I have not seen any fall prevention program which has reduced falls signigficantly without adding sitters.
Programs like falling star, workplace re-organization, alarms are ways of reducing falls but not preventing falls.
If anyone knows about a tried and tested technique which works and does not involve FTE, please post.

The idea sounds reasonable, but I wanted to know if there is any approach which can help me maximize the cost. Apart from any post-fall intervention costs, is there any other cost that I should consider in the analysis ? I want to show the maximum possible cost associated with any fall.
 

Our “sitter” program showed significant improvement. Here is a summary of what we tried
1. Screen patients for potential to fall
2. Assign the patients to the “sitter” or “searcher” (as we called them)
3. Searcher rounds every 15-20 mins and offers help for toilet and moving.
This program reduced the average falls from 6 per month to less than…[Read more]

[email protected]

Ramesh
Sounds like you guys are doing a lot of good work there. How can I get in touch with you
-Anoop

how much time does it take for you to discharge a patient?
 

The process for us works this way…
1. nursing care conference—>
2. nurse identify discharge—>
3. call doc and confirm dis—>
4. order in system—>
5. med. recon. and other stuff—?
6.pt. goes home.
before we started working on this issue, we were looking at times from point 4 to 6.This looked okay !!! about 1.5 to 2 hours… But…[Read more]

You are right. Its not easy to change unless some senior management guy wakes up and says something or there is a hospital 30 miles away which does a better job than you. (We have 4 hospitals within 40 mile radius). I think its a matter of time until one or the other happens.

John
I almost thought that you worked for our hospital. The scene here is very similar to  what you describe with the exception that we dont have a  hospitalist program.
When dealing with such an issue, you have 2 groups, nurses and physicians and unless physicians change their attitudes the nurses are reluctant to change. So a lot of eff…[Read more]

[email protected]
 
Thats my email address. Please pass it on to appropriate people and also email me so that I can have your email address.
Thanks
Anoop

Brit
Thats really helpful. I think we definitely need to look at our case management issues so that we can relieve some of the pressure on beds.
I just cant believe that there is no way to work around this discharge order.
Its amazinz how no one else on this forum has this issue or is working on this issue except you. What hospital do you work…[Read more]

I am in the US and our hospital does not have a hospitalist program. There has to be something that can be done !!!