As a perioperative business manager for almost a decade, I’ve seen dozens of operating room efficiency improvement projects and benchmarks that focus heavily on first case delays and turnover times. On the surface, that makes sense; if the first…
In a previous article, I talked about how higher “velocity” contributes to greater efficiencies in a healthcare operations setting. The key to increasing velocity is to focus on minimizing the non value-added time before attempting to improve the value-added time.…
The notion of improving operational efficiency is conspicuously absent from the healthcare debate — neither Obamacare nor the newly proposed GOP plan discusses the impact that a step-function improvement in efficiency could have on access to healthcare (through more capacity),…
I think we can safely add “travel agent” to the list of anachronisms that have gradually receded from our collective consciousness. Along with pay phones, and at some point in the future, brick-and-mortar retail stores. One needn’t look far to…
A recent RNnetwork survey found half of the nurses they surveyed (49.8 percent) have contemplated switching professions, with 27 percent citing overwork as the reason. In his analysis of this data (as reported by Kelly Gooch on Becker’s Hospital Review),…
[bctt tweet="Reducing length of stay (LOS) has become a major priority for management in many hospitals." username="leantaas"] While reimbursement requirements are a major driver of this focus, reducing LOS can also decrease the number of hospital-acquired conditions (HACs), which are…
Hat tip to Sharon O’Keefe, CEO of the University of Chicago Medical Center, for introducing the phrase “make your assets sweat” to our team, which inspired me to write this article. The Affordable Care Act, increased government regulations and rising healthcare…
It would be an understatement to say that 2016 was a year of unanticipated results. I expect 2017 will be another fascinating year for providers, patients, suppliers and payers. As president and CMO of LeanTaaS, I expect to have a…
One minute of utilized operating room (OR) time can be worth more than $70 in revenue and one minute of staffed OR time can cost $50 or more, making underutilized OR time a huge problem. Each year, roughly 51 million…
A common challenge with healthcare in general, and cancer care in particular, is the peaks and valleys in patient appointment scheduling, which often results in inefficient use of scarce and expensive resources, unpredictable wait times for patients and overtime hours…
