LEAN at OMHS
Thinking outside the box to better serve our community
(from Vim & Vigor magazine, Winter 2008)
Are you a person who is always thinking about better ways to do your job? Are you always on a quest to be more organized, to make one trip instead of two, or eliminate steps so that you're more efficient? You may not realize it, but you are a "lean" thinker.
Just as you are constantly seeking new ways to streamline your day-to-day tasks, the healthcare industry has been applying the very same concepts. The concept of "lean healthcare" focuses on eliminating obstacles that get in the way of providing the safest, highest quality, most efficient healthcare possible.
In this effort, organizations like OMHS are working diligently to identify unnecessary or wasteful practices and working to create a culture of continuous improvement. Based on the Toyota production model of the 1980s, lean principles address several types of waste, such as waiting times, excess motion, and inventory management. By learning to adopt lean thinking, OMHS is discovering new, more efficient ways to deliver excellent patient care.
So what does all of this mean for you, the patient? Effective implementation of lean concepts 
ultimately results in a more streamlined patient experience. Less waiting, less confusion, more time with nurses, and in the end, a safer overall healthcare environment.
At OMHS, teams composed of front-line healthcare professionals, administrators and support personnel have been working together each month to create positive changes. The efforts, called OMHS Kaizen (pronounced ki-zan) events, involve intense observation, problem identification, brainstorming and eventually implementing improvements.
The term kaizen is Japanese for "continuous improvement." When applied in the workplace, these activities often results in small improvements, which, when aligned as whole, yield large results in productivity and patient care.
So far this year, the OMHS teams have worked together to improve things as small as storage areas in nursing stations and as large as redesigning the patient discharge process. All of these changes have been steps toward offering the safest, most efficient and highest-quality healthcare to you--and all of our patients.
Learn about other initiatives that help to build Top 5% quality at OMHS