Gary Passama

Gary Passama, president and CEO of NorthBay Healthcare, draws on his 30-plus years in administration to commend on health care and the politics and social influences that surround it.

Blood, Sweat and Cheers

June 19, 2014
 

A virus is spreading within NorthBay Healthcare and it is becoming more virulent. Department after department is falling prey to it. After it hits, nothing is the same again.

And that is exactly the result we want.

We recently injected the "Blood, Sweat and Cheers" virus into four programs that will be part of the new NorthBay Wellness Center, to be built on our NorthBay VacaValley Hospital campus. They include the Specialty Medical Practices Clinic, Outpatient Rehabilitation, Occupational Health and NorthBay Cancer Center.

One of our LEAN facilitators (the folks charged with improving our delivery process) helped infect these programs with "Blood, Sweat and Cheers" to ensure new quarters that will house the Wellness Center are best designed to improve care for their patients.

We attacked the current processes to reduce the time between when a patient first seeks care and when the patient is actually seen. Successful inoculation of the Blood, Sweat and Cheers virus required the injection of several LEAN techniques.

The first technique was implementing 5S (Sort, Simplify, Sweep, Standardize and Sustain). This is a bottoms-up approach involving all staff. A close examination of current practices was necessary. Additional ideas were generated to aid the spread and strength of the virus.

Each program developed a "spaghetti diagram" to illustrate the current process used to make appointments or otherwise give patients access to their providers. These diagrams are not pretty. You see, this is one ugly virus.

Once it obtained a foothold, there was immediate change for the better. Each program assessed what went well and what challenges or roadblocks exist. As a result, improvements will reflect what was learned.

There will be no recovering from this virus. It is now part of these programs. And we will not immunize our organization. That would be a mistake.

It occurs to me that the VA healthcare system needs to be similarly infected, but that would require a much more massive dose.

Tags: gary, vacavalley, wellness center, cancer center, occupational health, LEAN, hospital management

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