Kaizen methodology for process improvement in a hospital

• Autor(a) principal: Afonseca, Joana Filipa da Silva
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/37843
• topic: Lean healthcare; Kaizen; Continuous improvement; Operating room; Outpatient care; Kiosk

Hospitals and health-care providers are always challenged to improve the efficiency of processes and the quality of services while keeping economic sustainability in mind. More than efficiency and quality, the pandemic situation caused by Covid-19 highlighted the importance of flexibility and adaptability in operational management. This project emerges with the intention of contributing to the improvement of health processes, making them simpler, less expensive, generating greater satisfaction, contributing to an improvement in the hospital’s response to new challenges, in a system that tends to be more digital, giving greater assertiveness to the tasks performed, both in the Complementary Diagnosis and Therapeutic Means Service, as well as in the Outpatient Department and Operating Room. Benefiting from the Value Stream Mapping (VSM) tool, the current situation was mapped in the services, analysing the patient’s path. All the opportunities for improvement found were described in order to subsequently design solutions. Next, the implementation of those solutions in each of the services is described. By implementing simple but immeasurable impact tools such as Daily Kaizen, 5S and Standard Work, the foundations are created to promote cultural change with a focus on continuous improvement and eliminating paradigms. The initiatives defined have demonstrated their success, achieving improvements in various areas. In the Complementary Diagnostic and Therapeutic Means service, it allowed the elimination of the paper checklist and the improvement in the communication of exams with external providers. In the Operating Room, they resulted in the improvement of the start time and in the reduction of cancellations due to delays in previous surgeries and non preparation of patients. In the Outpatient Department, the service kiosks were implemented in order to allow the patients to self check-in and access all procedures and appointments without consulting the administrative staff. Despite the increase in the number of publications on this topic in recent years, the application of Kaizen methodologies in the healthcare sector has lagged behind other industries and examples of successful applications are scarce. This project aims to combat this problem by providing an example supported by promising results that can be incorporated in other healthcare institutions.