Poor supply systems in the health care system present an obstacle toward the delivery of patient-centered care. Patient-centered care can be achieved by involving patient as and their families in the design and decisions about their health care. Patient-centered care ensures that nurses deliver high quality that provides maximum satisfaction to patients. However, offering patient-centered care has proven challenging in most healthcare settings. Poor supply systems result in operational failures, which in turn attributes to wastage of time among nurses in the course of delivering care. Nurses are often forced to leave patients behind and hunt for treatment materials, leaving them unattended thereby delaying delivery of care.
The lean principles identify that the waste of motion, waste of transport, waste of defective products, waste of overproduction, waste of inventory, and the waste of over-processing may occur by having poor supply systems. The waste of waiting occurs because patient queuing time is increased while they wait for materials, resources, and nurses to provide services of care delivery (D’Andreamatteo et al., 2015). A hospital may, therefore, end up spending additional financial resources in paying nurses who attend to overstayed patients. Waste of transport that is misaligned to the service demand of patients increases lead times. Transportation of materials from one place to another can lead to breakages and damage of raw materials. Waste of defective products or services can result when nurses end up providing products that do not attend to customer’s expectation. Waste of overproduction occurs when doctors are forced to make unnecessary patient referrals, hospitalizations, tests, or make excess material acquisitions (Hicks et al., 2015). Waste of inventory, on the other hand, occurs because the hospital will be forced to hold a high level of patients unnecessarily. Patients that are ready to be discharged may end up overstaying and using hospital beds that could be used by new patients. Hospitals may be forced to order excess beds to compensate for the erratic supply. Waste of over processing occurs when additional processing costs are used in rescheduling missed patient appointments.
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The lean strategies of improvement include defining customer value, mapping the value stream, creating flow, establishing pull, and pursuing perfection. Defining customer value involves uncovering the service or product that a customer wants, how they want it to be delivered, and the price they can afford (Hicks et al., 2015). Hospitals could develop standard-equipment order sets for high-volume and equipment intensive medical procedures. Nurses should also use patient diagnosis and medical information at the start of their hospital stay to know the materials and equipment that patients will require. Nurses should also collaborate with the supply department to allow them to prepare care materials proactively. Customer focus will enable nurses to identify value stream of each service, eliminate wastes, provide what customers want, and pursue perfection.
Hospitals should adopt a pull production system that will trigger automatic material replenishment any time when inventory falls below a predefined expected level. Kanban is an example of pull production system tool of controlling logistical chain and inventory (D’Andreamatteo et al., 2015). Suppliers will, therefore, have an overview of material demand and connect it to supply order. Hospitals will, therefore, have control of its activities and avoid over-ordering materials and equipment. Value stream mapping can reduce the wastes of transportation by ensuring that transportation of materials is appropriately documented and align to adding value to customers. Any transport activity that does not contribute towards value addition for customers is reduced or eliminated. Creating flows will ensure that the supply of materials run smoothly without delays or interruptions. A smooth flow of operations can be achieved by leveling out workloads in nursing departments, and ensuring that nursing departments are cross-functional. Besides, managers can use Gemba Walks to visit working areas and identify opportunities to eliminate the waste of motion (Hicks et al., 2015).
References
D’Andreamatteo, A., Ianni, L., Lega, F., &Sargiacomo, M. (2015). Lean in healthcare: A comprehensive review. Health policy, 119(9), 1197-1209.
Hicks, C., McGovern, T., Prior, G., & Smith, I. (2015). Applying lean principles to the design of healthcare facilities. International Journal of Production Economics, 170, 677-686.
