DailyKaizen

I returned from being on the road last week to hear about a rapid process improvement event last week that went well. Really well. So well that everyone says so without prompting, from multiple clinical and business units. Considering the complexity that comes with health care, and the many stakeholders involved in improving an entire system, this is really remarkable. I visited the site where the event took place yesterday, and the feelings were still present. Most importantly to me is that I wasn’t there, and I don’t need to be - they did this on their own.

I then received a message from a staff member later in the day about their experience at another event (also one where I was not present) that is worthy of remembering whenever we ask ourselves, “why are we doing this anyway?”

I’m deciding not to post the entire note here, but I will quote one of the things that was said

I believe it is everyone’s dream who works for GHC [Group Health Cooperative] to be asked to part of the process and development of changes or upgrades…… My experience with QIST [Quality Improvement Support Team - our name for these events] was amazing. At QIST we all met as a clinic before the QIST event even took place. We got to discuss as a clinic what was important to us. Then we all got to vote on it- MD’s, RN’s, LPN’s, MA’s, and management.

And the response from our LEAN process owner back to me

Thanks for passing along, this is exactly what we hoped to accomplish with QISTs.

It is great to not have to dream about this anymore….

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