Akron children’s home is a pediatric care system with its headquarters based in the Northwest of Ohio. The hospital operates with two other pediatric hospitals that offer services to approximately eighty locations in the country. The hospitals are capable of holding the capacity of a half a million clients suffering from complex medical problems, among them, being the ten, children, and the adults from all over the fifty states of the United States. The large number attracted to Akron is attributed to its reputation that has spread internationally for being among hospitals that provide the best medical services and reasonable care to its patients. It hosts both a clinic and a University Hospital. ("About Akron Children's Hospital Pediatrics (ACHP) | Akron Children's Hospital," 2018)As such, they can recruit doctors that are gifted, medical experts, and leading scientists in the field of medicine at the top of their professions. Endowment with excellent facilities and skilled manpower has enabled the hospital to make successful surgeries that are lifesaving besides numerous medical innovations since its establishment.
Assessment of Operations
According to the statistics and data collected from different departments of the hospital, sure operational processes need some requirements at the same time resources to implement them. It is in line with the stiff competition that the hospital faces from the two neighboring hospitals that are large and heavily funded. Besides serving the children, the two hospitals also offer services to older people. That poses a threat to the operations of the hospital. One of the requirements of the hospital is the acquisition of a more significant market share of clients in the competitive industry. The second requirement is the expansion of the hospital in a bid to accommodate a higher number of doctors and more patients.
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In the implementation of the above, the hospital needs to have access to qualified and highly experienced doctors and specialists whose presence and their input will be reflected by attracting a good number of clients at the same time still retain the existing ones. The hospital will also be obliged to acquire more land in expanding its premises. It will be accompanied by getting more hospital facilities that are modernized to increase the efficiency of carrying out their activities. The technology of the hospital will also have to be updated just to keep the institution at per with the current changes that have taken place in the medical field. The Center for Operations Excellence of the hospital is to come up with a plan that will the expansion of the hospital raise the number of clients that were previously attended to from within and outside Ohio (Vinas, 2010). As such, it will rank top in quality achievements through improvement of its infrastructure and clinical programs.
In a term of three years, the hospital managed to save a couple of millions of dollars through proper utilization of its available resources that were expensive and achieved the best from it. Through appropriate supervision by the operations team, workers managed to minimize wastage of time that previously had led to delays. After the benefits that were realized from executing the management’s plan, all the staff resolved to adapt to the idea for the long-term effects that were believed to have a competitive advantage over the other two competing firms.
Volume to Value-based Delivery System
Since Akron was a small compared to her competitors, it did not enjoy the benefits that accompany significant economies of scale. It was forced to operate on the minimal resources and fully optimizing on them. It did not receive the loans, donation, or grants that the other won. This was even made worse by only accepting children clients unlike the others that received clients of all calibers, this, in turn, hinders them from reliance on insurance reimbursements. Consequently, the two hospitals are attached with University Medical Schools in Cleveland which means they are better associated with research in the field of medicine and the associated technologies. However, the small size of the hospital has proved to be of essence to a certain extent. It has been regarded as simple in executing operations primarily in the existing surrounding that is perceived to have a lean culture that makes it easy to adapt.
Take for example larger hospitals that have large volumes of patients that flow in every day, have well scheduled out plans for every activity that is carried out by each worker. They do not opt to acquire more staff in a bid to manage the population but instead choose to use modern machines that are effective and efficient in helping the doctors and experts carry out their activities on a timely basis. With the new Center for Operations Excellence in place, it scheduled the Magnetic Resonance Imaging diagnostic machine so that it could serve more clients at a given the time because the hospital was not in a position to use a second machine it had bought (Hanson, 2009). It allowed for more patients to be accommodated. There was a rise of MRI patients from eighty-six to a hundred and twelve each week. This resulted to a decrease in the in the cost of operations and a realization of over a million revenue accrued attribute of better scheduling of the Magnetic Resonance Imaging machine.
In the efforts to embrace value instead of volume, Akron management resolved to a couple of measures to encompass in its operations. The first one was sterilization of the surgery equipment using the same capacity or sterilization area but higher quality procedures without the need to add on the initial 3.5 million dollars that were initially used. Mark Watson, the president of Akron regional network had confirmed that they performed over ten thousand surgeries per year which drastically increased proving that the technicians involved in sterilizations of the equipment had a rough time in doing their job. However hard it was the hospital management found it hard to address the issue regarding the expansion of the sterilization area.
The hospital hence bought the idea of lean process improvement. They therefore resorted to scheduling a kaizen targeting minimizing the flash sterilization that was used before. Its implementation resulted in a realization of an additional four thousand surgeries each year and a low percentage of flash sterilization.
Healthcare Reform Measures
The flash sterilization was fixed, and the capacity of operation room increased to over fifteen thousand cases in addition to the previously handled. In a bid to have a single sterilization process department a wall was taken down, and the hospital acquires a set of a flat-screen television. Without even expanding the space by a single inch the department is now able to handle all the work related to sterilization. The hospital continued to carry out capacity studies on surgery and anticipates that in the next two and a half years it will be able to achieve and. The efficiency of eighty-five percent from the sixty-four percent that it operates at currently. It will mean that the hospital will be taking in a whopping fifteen million dollars in revenue in addition to what it gets at normal operations in the same sterilization room under the same quantity of workforce.
The second measure was the incorporation of low technology solutions that could increase the value of the customers. The proposal was adopted because a rise in the number MRI procedures was increasing drastically. As such the hospital was focusing on improving the value of patients by cutting back the time intervals they were previously allocated for accessing the doctors and other services that they needed within the hospital. The first changes in time were made at the outpatient's place (Miller, 2009). It was in consideration of parents, especially with sick kids who the management perceived to be given the priority. It was expected that it would lead to decongestion at the place since the clinic no accurate number could be attached to the frequently flowing in clients from across Akron and even beyond. The time scheduled for each patient meant that the different diversities of people from around the region including immigrants or the poor could receive medical attention.
To optimize on time allocated to patients, the hospital streamlines the flow of information by use of electronic medical records, use of visual whiteboards to track the flow of the patient’s appointment times, additional of a time huddle at the beginning of each patient session, and lastly they eliminated triage rooms. Among the objectives that were achieved by time cut back are the early feedback from customers.
Lastly, there was the implementation of the blue belt training that facilitated the coming of more people into the hospital. The mechanism involved the separation of duties and ranks of the management to various positions. Then the participants in their field of specialization or talent were trained to improve the overall operation of the hospital together with the quality of the services delivered to clients. The variability and waste of resources of such the equipment and facilities used not forgetting time were to be minimized. It was in a bid to support the programs ran by the management to achieve goals of strategic growth within the hospital. Subdivision of the positions implied that every individual worker could be reached and even his or her work performance evaluated if need be ("Pediatric Hospital Medicine | Dept of Pediatrics | Pediatrics | University of Colorado Denver," 2018). The skills learned were the general relationship with fellow workers and the clients, processes that aimed at maintaining and sustaining the flow of patients in the hospital, and leadership qualities. The training was first assigned to the pediatric employees and spread to other departments where it was to touch all the three hundred workers that were expected to complete the training in by the end of the following year.
Trends and Forces in Operations Management
The hospital recognizes forces in operations management that led to the excellence and achievements of the hospital. We see after the hospital reaching a consensus of adopting the lean method, Watson, the leader by then of the Center for Operations Excellence was charged with the duty of embarking on the selection of the appropriate committee that would aid in coming up with concrete ideas on how to implement the plan that had been formulated. A lot of time was consumed in finding out the right personnel. It was achieved through diversification of the backgrounds of individuals regarding the type of skills and knowledge possessed. By so doing it eased him the work of management by delegating some of the duties so that he could concentrate on control of the organization. Choosing of people of diverse knowledge to work together on a plan by an organization helps in evaluating of different ideas that will lead to a fine one that will help solve a problem at hand rather than selecting few individuals from a single specialization.
Secondly, Watson went ahead and sent the team of the six people he had selected to go and train for six weeks. This was by going to other children hospitals and observes how treatment activities were carried out. The team later went to the John Hopkins University and acquired degrees in the relevant fields of specialization while other went to Ohio State University for further black belt training. It implied that organizations with a plan to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of its operations should accord necessary training skills and knowledge to those to implement it to enhance accuracy. As a result of taking the risk of going through the above plan, Akron’s efforts have been recognized and accorded the respect regarding rewards from the concerned health care organizations. It can compete effectively with the other hospitals in the same locality withstanding the associated adversities without collapsing.
References
About Akron Children's Hospital Pediatrics (ACHP) | Akron Children's Hospital. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.akronchildrens.org/pages/About-Akron-Children-s-Hospital-Pediatrics.html
Hanson, L. (2009). Introduction to Magnetic Resonance Imaging Techniques. Retrieved from http://www.drcmr.dk/Docs/MRI_English_a4.pdf
Miller, H. (2009). Pediatric Hospital Medicine | Dept of Pediatrics | Pediatrics | University of Colorado Denver. Retrieved from http://www.ucdenver.edu/academics/colleges/medicalschool/departments/pediatrics/subs/pedhospmed/Pages/PediatricHospitalMedicine.aspx
Pediatric Hospital Medicine | Dept of Pediatrics | Pediatrics | University of Colorado Denver. (2018). Retrieved from http://www.ucdenver.edu/academics/colleges/medicalschool/departments/pediatrics/subs/pedhospmed/Pages/PediatricHospitalMedicine.aspx
Vinas, T. (2010). Pediatric Hospital in Tough Market Pegs Growth to Lean Process Improvement. Retrieved from https://www.lean.org/search/documents/206.pdf
