Advanced Performance Improvement In Health Care

Amidst a deepening crisis in U.S. health care, Advanced Performance Improvement in Health Care provides a results-oriented approach to rehabilitating an ailing healthcare system. With his innovative, instructive strategies, Lighter offers a welcome road map to guide meaningful change in the industry and to equip healthcare managers to meet 21st century challenges. Advanced Performance Improvement in Health Care: Principles and Methods provides healthcare educators, leaders, and clinicians with the specific knowledge and tools vital for creating and advocating for quality-centric, next-generation healthcare organizations. This unique compilation of management, analytical, and statistical methods and techniques serves as a comprehensive guide to harnessing todays technology and developing a culture of quality that delivers sustainable, quantifiable value in healthcare organizations.

Basics of Health Care Performance Improvement: A Lean Six Sigma Approach prepares future healthcare administrators to meet the challenges of a changing marketplace through the proven Lean Six Sigma method of quality improvement—straightforward principles and procedures that enhance how healthcare organizations operate. With an eye toward meeting consumers’ increasing demand for value in health care, this new volume provides in-depth information on planning and implementing a “Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control” (DMAIC) initiative to reduce errors and improve performance in healthcare settings, and serves as an essential reference on the basics of Lean Six Sigma and its application in augmenting the quality of care. Key Features: Lean Six Sigma case studies drawn from the industry; A thorough exploration of DMAIC approach to quality improvement; Discussion questions in every chapter Instructor Resources: Instructor's Manual, PowerPoint Presentations, and a TestBank

Healthcare Organizations offer significant opportunities for change and improvement in their overall performance. Hospitals and clinics are generally large, complex, and inefficient, and need serious development in process workflow and management systems, which will ultimately lead to better patient and financial outcomes. The National Academy of Medicine has stated that hospital systems are broken, and that they must begin by "... improving hospital efficiency and patient flow, and using operational management methods and information technologies." In fact, costs and quality are two of the important aspects of the "triple aim" in healthcare. One area that offers significant potential for improvement is through the application of performance improvement methods to patient and process flows. Performance improvement has a significant impact on a hospital’s over financial and strategic performance. Performance improvement involves the deployment of quantitative and scientific methods to model and influence the functioning of organizations. Performance improvement professionals are tasked with managing a variety of activities, such as deploying new information technologies, serving as project managers for construction events, re-engineering departmental process workflow, eliminating bottlenecks, and improving the flow and movement of patients between resource-intensive clinical areas. All of these are high risk, and require use of advanced, sophisticated methods to improve efficiency and quality, while minimizing disruptions from change. This updated edition is a comprehensive and concise guide to performance improvement in healthcare. It describes the management engineering principles focused on designing optimal management and information systems and processes. Case studies and examples are integrated throughout all chapters.

Improve patient outcomes, lower costs, reduce fraud—all with healthcare analytics Healthcare Analytics for Quality and Performance Improvement walks your healthcare organization from relying on generic reports and dashboards to developing powerful analytic applications that drive effective decision-making throughout your organization. Renowned healthcare analytics leader Trevor Strome reveals in this groundbreaking volume the true potential of analytics to harness the vast amounts of data being generated in order to improve the decision-making ability of healthcare managers and improvement teams. Examines how technology has impacted healthcare delivery Discusses the challenge facing healthcare organizations: to leverage advances in both clinical and information technology to improve quality and performance while containing costs Explores the tools and techniques to analyze and extract value from healthcare data Demonstrates how the clinical, business, and technology components of healthcare organizations (HCOs) must work together to leverage analytics Other industries are already taking advantage of big data. Healthcare Analytics for Quality and Performance Improvement helps the healthcare industry make the most of the precious data already at its fingertips for long-overdue quality and performance improvement.

PROVEN STRATEGIES FOR REVOLUTIONIZING HEALTHCARE SYSTEMS "If I had to sum up this book in one word, the word would be 'brilliant'! This is one of the most insightful books on TOC, not just for healthcare, that I have ever read." --BOB SPROULL, author of The Ultimate Improvement Cycle: Maximizing Profits through the Integration of Lean, Six Sigma, and the Theory of Constraints Performance Improvement for Healthcare: Leading Change with Lean, Six Sigma, and Constraints Management lays out an integrated approach for using three industrially based methods to transform hospital operations in terms of patient outcomes and experience, financial viability, and employee satisfaction. This pioneering guide presents a scalable strategy for managing bottlenecks, eliminating waste, reducing errors, and containing costs in healthcare organizations, as well as sustaining the gains achieved. Real-world case studies illustrate successful performance improvement implementations that have realized breakthrough operational and financial results. COVERAGE INCLUDES: Constraints Management applications in healthcare The NOVACES SystemCPI--an integrated performance improvement deployment approach Three-part assessment--strategic gap analysis, system-level value stream analysis, and system constraint analysis Planning a performance improvement program deployment to ensure timely and consistent execution Applying the right tool to the right problem from a system perspective Sustaining gains achieved by the performance improvement team Defining a path to self-sufficiency

One in five U.S. adults experiences a mental illness within a given year. With more than 550,000 people working to support this underserved community, the mental healthcare system has grappled with inadequacies and shortcomings in safety, quality, and care delivery. There is a wide range of problems, from access-to-care issues and errors, to complications stemming from poor care. Our country is also on an unsustainable path as our healthcare expenditure keeps growing. To add to all of this, we are facing a rampant epidemic of burnout among healthcare workers. Modern advancements introduced with many promises—such as electronic medical records, newer medications, or advanced treatments—have created unique challenges when ushered into a highly regulated healthcare system. What does it take to provide patients with everything they need—the right quality of care, at the right time, and at the right cost—to keep them healthy? Which process steps add value? Which steps are wasteful? A widely accepted fact is that a conservative 30-50% of every step in the mental healthcare process does not help patients feel better or stay better. When considering delays in care, workarounds, excessive documentation, and an overuse of auditing, the care system has moved highly skilled clinicians away from providing value, as administrative tasks continue to encroach on their time. There is a clear need to rethink and redesign the system of care. This book is a primer for understanding the current state of the mental health system and the performance improvement skills and leadership acumen needed to address existing challenges. Sheppard Pratt, the award-winning, leading institution for mental healthcare in America, provided the focus on mental healthcare and became the laboratory for this body of work over the course of eight years. It hired a seasoned systems thinker with improvement expertise to work with mental health professionals and solve some of their most complex and chronic problems. The book is a result of the collaboration between a practicing psychiatrist in a leadership role and the systems engineer. Working together, they demonstrate how to think about redesigning care and redefining the nature of work to enhance value for both the people served and the healthcare workforce. They crafted a multi-pronged approach towards culture change at Sheppard Pratt, including implementing a course on "Learning to Improve," which introduced staff to a performance improvement methodology. There are several vignettes interwoven throughout the book that describe the complexities and constraints of the system. Solving some of these challenges creates a new paradigm of work while minimizing waste and enhancing value.

America's health care system has become too complex and costly to continue business as usual. Best Care at Lower Cost explains that inefficiencies, an overwhelming amount of data, and other economic and quality barriers hinder progress in improving health and threaten the nation's economic stability and global competitiveness. According to this report, the knowledge and tools exist to put the health system on the right course to achieve continuous improvement and better quality care at a lower cost. The costs of the system's current inefficiency underscore the urgent need for a systemwide transformation. About 30 percent of health spending in 2009-roughly $750 billion-was wasted on unnecessary services, excessive administrative costs, fraud, and other problems. Moreover, inefficiencies cause needless suffering. By one estimate, roughly 75,000 deaths might have been averted in 2005 if every state had delivered care at the quality level of the best performing state. This report states that the way health care providers currently train, practice, and learn new information cannot keep pace with the flood of research discoveries and technological advances. About 75 million Americans have more than one chronic condition, requiring coordination among multiple specialists and therapies, which can increase the potential for miscommunication, misdiagnosis, potentially conflicting interventions, and dangerous drug interactions. Best Care at Lower Cost emphasizes that a better use of data is a critical element of a continuously improving health system, such as mobile technologies and electronic health records that offer significant potential to capture and share health data better. In order for this to occur, the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, IT developers, and standard-setting organizations should ensure that these systems are robust and interoperable. Clinicians and care organizations should fully adopt these technologies, and patients should be encouraged to use tools, such as personal health information portals, to actively engage in their care. This book is a call to action that will guide health care providers; administrators; caregivers; policy makers; health professionals; federal, state, and local government agencies; private and public health organizations; and educational institutions.

The Institute of Medicine study Crossing the Quality Chasm (2001) recommended that an interdisciplinary summit be held to further reform of health professions education in order to enhance quality and patient safety. Health Professions Education: A Bridge to Quality is the follow up to that summit, held in June 2002, where 150 participants across disciplines and occupations developed ideas about how to integrate a core set of competencies into health professions education. These core competencies include patient-centered care, interdisciplinary teams, evidence-based practice, quality improvement, and informatics. This book recommends a mix of approaches to health education improvement, including those related to oversight processes, the training environment, research, public reporting, and leadership. Educators, administrators, and health professionals can use this book to help achieve an approach to education that better prepares clinicians to meet both the needs of patients and the requirements of a changing health care system.