Leveraging Lean in Healthcare: Transforming Your Enterprise into a High Quality Patient Care Delivery System

This practical guide for healthcare executives, managers, and frontline workers, provides the means to transform your enterprise into a High-Quality Patient Care Business Delivery System. Designed for continuous reference, its self-contained chapters are divided into three primary sections:

• Defines what Lean is and includes some interesting history about Lean not found elsewhere.
• Describes and explains the application of each Lean tool and concept organized in their typical order of use.
• Explains how to implement Lean in various healthcare processes—providing examples, case studies, and valuable lessons learned

This book will help to take you out of your comfort zone and provide you with new ways to extend value to your customers. It drives home the importance of the Lean Six Sigma journey. The pursuit of continuous improvement is a journey with no end. Consequently, the opportunities are endless as to what you and your organization can accomplish.

About the Authors

In November 1997, Charlie Protzman formed Business Improvement Group, LLC (BIG). BIG is located in Baltimore, MD, and specializes in implementing Lean thinking principles and the Lean business delivery system (LBDS).

Charlie has over 26 years experience in materials and operations management. He spent over 13 years with AlliedSignal, now Honeywell, where he was an aerospace strategic operations manager and the first AlliedSignal Lean master. He has received numerous special-recognition and cost-reduction awards. Charlie was an external consultant for DBED's Maryland Consortium while he was with AlliedSignal. He had input into the resulting World Class Criteria document and assisted in the first three initial DBED World Class Company Assessments. Charlie has taught students in Lean principles and total quality from all over the world.

Charlie has spent the last 16 years implementing successful Lean product line conversions, Kaizen events, administrative business system improvements (transactional Lean) across the United States. He specializes in hospital/healthcare implementations in addition to manufacturing.

Charlie has a BA and MBA from Loyola University in Maryland. He is currently a member of SME, SAE, IIE, and the Association for Psychological Type. He is a charter certified MBTI instructor. He was a past member of APICS, AME Champions Club, and NAPM organizations.

Dr. George Mayzell is a board certified internist and geriatrician with over 10 years of patient care experience and over 15 years of administrative health industry experience.

Dr. Mayzell assumed the role of senior vice president and chief patient care officer in December 2008 at Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare. Methodist is a seven hospital system with over 1600 licensed beds in Memphis, TN. He is responsible for patient care operations and oversight of regulatory readiness for the system. Previously, he served as chief medical officer (CMO) for Methodist Germantown Hospital.

In addition to being a past faculty member at the University of Florida, Dr. Mayzell also worked at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida where he was directly involved with medical management activities, including disease management, utilization review, appeals and grievances, case management, pharmacy benefits, pay for performance, and Medicare risk.

Joyce Kerpchar has over twenty-eight years of healthcare industry experience and currently serves as the Director of the Institute for Surgical Advancement at Florida Hospital Orlando, which is part of the Adventist Health System, an acute-care, tertiary hospital caring for more than 1.5 million patients a year. She joined Florida Hospital in 2001 and spent over five years as a senior consultant implementing Lean across the eight campuses in a variety of clinical departments, is a Six Sigma Black Belt and is a certified MBTI instructor.

She began her career as a board certified physician's assistant in cardiovascular and thoracic surgery and primary care medicine. Prior to joining Florida Hospital, she held a variety of administrative positions in healthcare-related industries, which included managed care operations and contracting for a PruCare/Prudential Healthcare who served 200,000 members in nine counties in Central Florida, Product Management for Avio Corporation, a provider of information technology for ambulatory healthcare organization, and was a partner in a consulting firm which specialized in business and market entry strategy for high tech start-ups.

Ms. Kerpchar is passionate about leveraging Lean in healthcare processes, to eliminate waste and reduce errors, to improve the overall quality and reduce the cost of providing healthcare.