How Office Lean™ Works:
Administrative Lean(tm) makes use of Value Stream Mapping, a simple, elegant tool to show how work is done and how to improve that work. This approach ensures that everyone is aware of the process as it works today, agrees on current performance of that process, and is involved in planning its improvement.  The Value Stream Map tool:

*  Shows flow of process steps required to complete a product or service from order to delivery
*  Reveals waste and measures process performance
*  Links material and information flow
*  Gets people involved in planning and deploying a process improvement plan

The work group (employees who know specific details of the process) first draws a Current State Value Stream Map to see and understand how work is presently done.  The work group measures the process time (the amount of work done to complete a task) and lead time (the total time to provide a product or service from order to delivery).  The work group then draws a Future State Map to improve quality and reduce lead time and process time by eliminating waste in the process. Value Stream Mapping shows where to use Lean techniques such as visual workplace, standard/balanced work, one-piece flow processing with cross-trained workers, and pull systems.

The process improvement (Kaizen) plan envisioned in Value Stream Mapping is based on understanding the current state, setting process improvement goals that are tied to Business and Operational goals and making a plan to effectively achieve them.

Lean Tools:
Workplace organization and standard work are two Lean tools to achieve
Future State objectives. For example, administrative offices are stocked and laid out with visual controls to show at a glance where equipment and supplies belong, with automatic reorder points in each supply cabinet (i.e. a pull system). Standard work specifies content, timing, sequence and outcome of tasks using a learning approach of iterative questioning and problem solving that allows employees to eliminate variation so that deviation from standards is obvious, and there is no ambiguity about who provides what to whom and when and build in quality (error-proof).

Lean Examples:
Below are summaries of results from two manufacturing companies applying the theory and practice of Administrative Lean(tm). The tables compare Current and Future State Value Stream metrics, and show results when Lean Techniques are put to effective use to reduce process time and lead-time and improve quality.

Conclusion: The Value Stream Perspective show process flow from a systems view, and reveals how to measure performance of that system. The Value Stream Map and the process improvement plan based on that map are used to put Lean Thinking to effective use throughout the enterprise.

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Healthcare Lean™ Case Studies

 

Lean Overview
Lean Thinking is an integrated approach to designing, doing, and improving the work of groups of people working together to produce and deliver goods, services, and information. Healthcare Lean™, based on the Toyota Production System, applies concepts and techniques of Lean Thinking to hospitals and physician practices.

Healthcare Lean™ makes use of Value Stream Mapping, a simple, elegant tool to show how work is done and how to improve that work. The work group (employees who know specific details of the process) first draws a Current State Value Stream Map to see and understand how work is presently done. The work group measures the process time (the amount of work done to complete a task) and lead time (the total time to provide a product or service from order to delivery). The work group then draws a Future State Map to improve quality and reduce lead time and process time by eliminating waste in the process. Value Stream Mapping shows where to use Lean techniques such as visual workplace, standard/balanced work, one-piece flow processing with cross-trained workers, and pull systems. The process improvement (Kaizen) plan envisioned in Value Stream Mapping is based on understanding the current state, setting process improvement goals, and making a plan to achieve future state objectives.

Healthcare Lean™ Case Studies

Below are summaries of four Hospital work groups applying the theory and practice of Healthcare Lean™. The tables compare Current and Future State Value Stream metrics of four processes, and show results when Lean techniques are put to use to improve quality by reducing process time and lead-time

1. Hospital Billing Process from Receipt of Voucher toTransmitting Claim or Posting
Metric	Current State	Future State	Improvement
Number of process steps	16	9	42%
Process time (minutes)	86	37	57%
Lead time	5 days	2 hours	90%

 

2. Endoscopy Procedure Process from Patient Arrival to Discharge
Metric	Current State	Future State	Improvement
Process time (minutes)	178	131	26%
Patient wait time (minutes)	81	11	86%
Lead time (minutes)	260	142	45%

 

3. Physical Medicine Office Visit Process from Patient Arrival to Completed Report
Metric	Current State	Future State	Improvement
Number of process steps	24	6	75%
Process time (minutes)	179	58	68%
Lead time (days)	34	1	97%

 

4. Procedure Scheduling Process from Physician inquiry to Scheduled Appointment
Metric	Current State	Future State	Improvement
Number of process steps	14	8	42%
Process time (minutes)	69	18	70%
Lead time (days)	34	3	90%
Percent Rework (rescheduling appointments)	25%	2%	92%

 

Who is the customer in a Healthcare Value Stream?

 

The goal of Healthcare Lean™ to improve quality by reducing cost of non-value added steps, that is, work not reimbursed by the payer. This is done by reducing process time and lead time, as shown in the four examples. The intent of Healthcare Lean™ is to improve, not interfere with, the value added process: the encounter of the patient and the caregiver. Value Stream Mapping does this by making clear that the output of the process is delivered to a customer other than the patient. This is shown in the Value Stream examples in which the customer is not the patient:

 

Process	Output of process	Customer
Hospital billing from   receipt  of voucher to transmitting claim and posting-payment	Transmitted claim or posted payment in 2 hours	Payer and Accounting Dept.
Endoscopy procedure from patient arrival to discharge	Increase throughput of preparation and procedure steps by eliminating recovery bottleneck	Physician
Physician medicine from patient arrival to discharge	Complete and accurate physical or occupational therapy report in one day	Physician
Procedure scheduling from physician inquiry to scheduled appointment	Scheduled, authorized appointment for a procedure (e.g., chest roentgenogram, colonoscopy, cardiac ultrasound) in 3 days	Resource that does the procedure (e.g., radiology, endoscopy, cardiovascular departments)

 

Conclusion: The Value Stream Perspective show process flow from a systems view, and reveals how to measure performance of that system. Value Stream Mapping is effective and useful because it makes visible the link between material flow (e.g., scheduled procedure or physician office visit, endoscopy or physical medicine report, or claim for a physician encounter) and information flow (e.g., telephone requests, appointment scheduling software, on-line transmissions from payers). Healthcare does not need more queuing algorithms to optimize flow and reduce labor cost. Healthcare needs Lean Thinking to see processes from a Value Stream Perspective, to understand the role of the patient and the customer in that Value Stream, and to put to effective use improvement plans to build-in-quality eliminating waste in the process.

         The Application of Lean Thinking to the Care of Patients with Bone and Brain
         Metastasis with Radiation Therapy

Christopher S Kim, MD, MBA; James A Hayman, MD, MBA; John E Billi, MD; Kathy Lash, BS, RT (R)(T); Theodore S. Lawrence, MD, PhD
University of Michigan Medical School, Division of General Internal Medicine (CK, JB), Department of Internal Medicine.  Department of Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases (CK).  Department of Radiation Oncology (JAH, KL, TSL).

        Correspondence

Christopher S. Kim, MD, MBA
Instructor, Internal Medicine
Instructor, Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases
University of Michigan Medical School
Division of General Medicine
Department of Internal Medicine
3119 Taubman Center, Box 0376
1500 E. Medical Center Drive
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-0376
Telephone: 734-647-2892
Facsimile: 734-615-8401
E-mail: seoungk@med.umich.edu

Statement About the Originality of the Work: This report has not been published previously. There are no copyright constraints with publications of this manuscript.

Financial Support: None

Potential Conflict of Interest: None disclosed.

Key Words:  Lean, Efficiency, Quality, Standardization, Patient Flow, Bone Metastases, Brain Metastases, Radiation Therapy

ABSTRACT:
Purpose:  Patients with bone and brain metastases are among the most symptomatic non-emergency patients treated by radiation oncologists.  Treatment should begin as soon as possible after the request.  We tested the hypothesis that the operational improvement method based on Lean Thinking could help streamline the treatment of our patients referred for bone and brain metastases.
Materials and Methods:  University of Michigan Health System has adopted Lean Thinking as a consistent approach to quality and process improvement.  We applied the principles and tools of Lean Thinking, especially value as defined by the customer, value stream mapping processes, and one piece flow, to improve the process of delivering care to patients referred for bone or brain metastases.
Results:  The initial evaluation of the process revealed that it was complex and highly variable.  Implementation of the Lean Thinking principles permitted us to improve the process by: 1) cutting the number of individual steps to begin treatment from twenty seven to sixteen and; 2) minimizing variability by applying standardization.  After an initial learning period, the percent of new patients with brain or bone metastases receiving consultation, simulation and treatment within the same day rose from 43% to nearly 95%.
Conclusions:  By implementing the ideas of Lean Thinking, we improved the delivery of clinical care for our patients with bone or brain metastases.  We believe these principles can be applied to much of the care administered throughout our and other healthcare delivery areas.

INTRODUCTION:
Bone and brain metastases are common manifestations of progressing malignancies.  The main goals in administering radiation therapy for patients with these conditions are for pain relief, preservation of the bone's function and integrity in bone metastases; and to control neurological symptoms in patients with brain metastases.  Since early palliative therapy with radiation can provide rapid relief of symptoms in patients with bone or brain metastases [1-3], timeliness of evaluation, simulation, and start of actual treatment is an important goal for the patient.  Examination of the routine practice of care at our medical center revealed that only a minority of such patients were evaluated and started on their palliative treatments within the same day, thus we felt there was a tremendous opportunity to improve the delivery of care for these patients.  Furthermore, as a significant number of our patient population resides outside of the Southeast Michigan region, and must travel long distances to receive care at our facility, there was an opportunity to accommodate their desire to decrease the number of visits to start their therapy.

In an effort to deliver this type of timely, quality care, the Radiation Oncology Department at the University of Michigan turned to the process improvement ideas of Lean Thinking.  The University of Michigan Health System's (UMHS) adaptation of Lean Thinking as a consistent approach to quality and process improvement is also called the Michigan Quality System (MQS) [4].  Lean Thinking is a management philosophy developed from the manufacturing industry, initially pioneered and championed by Toyota Motor Corporation.  Toyota's way of operating its organization is now considered the gold standard in the practice of Lean management[5].  Taiichi Ohno, who is regarded as the founding father of Toyota's Lean production, has described the principle objective as "to deliver the maximum value to the customer while consuming the fewest resources by eliminating waste and reducing lead time. [6]"  Lean production has spread rapidly within the manufacturing industry and has demonstrated remarkable results[7, 8].  More recently, service industries such as banking, insurance, hotel management, and some healthcare organizations have implemented and realized the benefits of applying the practice of Lean production within their daily operational activities[9-11]. 

With the goal of improving the delivery of treatments to patients with bone and brain metastases in a timely manner, we set about improving the process of care using the tools and philosophy of Lean Thinking.  After the improvement activities, we assessed our success in achieving our goal of evaluation, simulation, and treatment within a single day's visit.

PATIENTS AND METHODS:
In July of 2005, the Radiation Oncology Department at the University of Michigan commissioned a process improvement team to implement a Lean project to improve patient care access and reduce excess work in providing palliative radiation therapy to patients referred for bone or brain metastases.  The goal was to improve the patient flow through the clinics, and to deliver high quality care through improved first time quality rather than by inspection at the end of the treatment process for errors made at the beginning of treatment planning.  Each year, the Department of Radiation Oncology's University of Michigan Hospital site (which is the largest facility served by the department) sees 1,600 new cases of patients seeking radiation therapy as a modality of treatment, approximately 15% of whom have bone or brain metastases.

The choice of this patient group was made by departmental leadership based on several advantages: after true radiation oncology emergencies, patients with bone and brain metastases would receive the greatest benefit from same day treatment; the treatment planning and delivery procedures have a standard which is well accepted by the department faculty and staff; and the input information necessary to initiate same day therapy would almost always be available, as nearly 100% of such referrals are from other University of Michigan physicians.

We first established a team representative of all the front line service providers: clerical staff, attending and resident physicians, simulation therapists, radiation therapists, nursing staff, physics and other administrative and support staff.  The team then developed a current state value stream map (CS VSM) for the treatment of bone and brain metastases.  A CS VSM is a detailed flowchart that reveals all the actions and processes required to deliver a service to a customer.  The greatest benefit of creating a value stream map as a Lean Thinking tool is that it allows the whole team to visualize all the steps involved in the work, and to then improve the whole process, and not just optimize individual parts[12].  The CS VSM permits the determination of "process time" (the actual time it takes to complete an activity), the "total lead time" (the total elapsed time associated with completing an activity), "first time quality" (the probability that a product (or the patient) will go through all individual process steps without encountering a quality-related problem)[13], and the "process cycle efficiency" (process time divided by the total lead time-a measure of what percent of time is spent in value added activity).  Any process with a cycle efficiency of less than 10% indicates that there is significant non-value added activity, or waste[14].  Waste is defined as "any human activity which absorbs resources but creates no value."[8]

In the next phase, we designed a future state value stream map (FS VSM), an often radically different series of process steps that allows the delivery of value to the customer faster, with fewer defects, using fewer resources.  A FS VSM is constructed by determining if any of the steps in the process can be done with less waste, or can be eliminated altogether[12].  The next step was to create a detailed work plan for implementing the FS VSM-to make that proposed process a reality.  In implementing the FS VSM, members of our team were assigned specific tasks with timelines to drive the flow of the process with optimal efficiency.

One of the first improvements was to revise the process for handling the call-in, dispatch, and scheduling procedure for evaluation, simulation, and treatment.  To do this, we developed a standard method of scheduling and preparing all the inputs to this process (medical documents, imaging studies/reports, physician notes, insurance information) as required by the physicians and billing department.  The clerical staff forwarded all referral calls to the radiation oncology schedulers.  Assistant personnel worked with the on-call house staff to set an appointment time and communicate to the chief therapist and nursing staff that a new patient needed to start treatment that day.  Billing was notified, and the chart, including medical documents and imaging studies, was prepared in a standard format as directed by the physician group.  These guidelines were outlined and explained to the clerical staff in a work sheet to improve the flow of work (Table 1a and 1b)

RESULTS:
Evaluation of the process prior to the initiation of this Lean project revealed that treating patients with bone and brain metastases was a complex process that required 27 separate steps to evaluate, simulate, and start treatment (Figure 1).  It also revealed that only 43% of the patients in the prior 6 months leading up to this project went through the entire series of steps required within a single day of visit.  Furthermore, although the process time averaged about 290 minutes, patients often waited up to a week before they had their treatments initiated (process time of 290 minutes divided by a lead time of up to 10,000 minutes, or a process cycle efficiency of as low as 3%).  This significant delay was due to the long wait times patients experienced while their paperwork or medical records were being collected or reviewed by the clinical service team. Importantly, we estimated that only 0.2% of the patients referred for the palliative bone or brain radiation went through the entire process from referral to start of therapy without the need for some sort of re-work (FTQ in figure 1). 

Our future state map revealed that the number of steps needed to initiate radiation therapy could be reduced to 16 steps; the process time could remain stable at 225 minutes, while the wait time cut down to nearly one day; and the potential to improve first time quality to 100% (Figure 2).

We are encouraged by the results of implementing the changes planned through the future state.  Compared to a baseline measurement prior to the start of this MQS project, where only 43% of the patients could have their evaluation, simulation and treatment initiated with a single visit, 94% of the patients now go through this process with a single visit, approaching our goal of 95%
(Table 2). 

Another achievement that came out of this project was to decrease the number of visits required to be evaluated and treatment started.  Previously, many of the patients made two or more visits to the clinic site to go through a consultation visit, followed by a simulation visit, which would then be followed by yet another visit to start therapy.

DISCUSSION:
In this study, we have found that while we were providing quality radiation therapy for our patients with bone and brain metastases, we were not able to meet their need of receiving timely and efficient evaluation, simulation and therapy initiation.  In addition, there was often poor first time quality because we did not always have the information we needed to carry out our tasks, and our work was not standardized.  As we evaluated this process using the Lean Thinking approach, we found it to be a complex process.  Often in large organizations, providing complex series of activities can seem routine, and as long as the process is not "broken" few individuals think to re-assess and improve the situation.  Through the use of the Lean Thinking process improvement model, we have re-designed our process, and have been able to decrease the total number of steps required to treat this patient population, decrease the number of visits required to start their therapy, and accommodate nearly all of our patients to go through the multi-step process within a single day, while decreasing our own work.

The application of Lean Thinking in the manufacturing sector has been highly successful and reproducible in different companies.  Corporations such as Toyota, Wiremold, Pratt & Whitney, and Showa Manufacturing utilized the principles and tools of Lean Thinking to revolutionize the way they operated their businesses [5, 8].  We found that our current system of operation in delivering radiation therapy to patients was a fragmented process which required a shift in how we thought about the flow of patient care delivery.  This sort of self discovery is not an uncommon phenomenon as one engages in a Lean Thinking project.  As we focused to improve the flow of care, our goal was to build quality into the process so that we could strive to do the work correctly the first time.  This concept of built-in quality assures that errors are not passed on.  Furthermore, if an error did occur, it would be identified early in the process so that information can be used to correct the error, before causing further and exponential problems downstream in the process.  Healthcare has traditionally used a process of inspecting the work as it gets passed on to the next step of the process.  This method of check system could lead to the need for workarounds, where a "quick fix" would be needed on the spot; or re-work by the individual that found the problem or individual(s) that performed the previous steps.  Lean Thinking encourages each team member to monitor and develop ideas to improve the flow of process, so that everyone focuses continuously on the goal of eliminating waste[15, 16].  This may be a novel idea to the healthcare sector, but if implemented in the right way, can dramatically change the way we provide care, with greater efficiencies and less delay.  The procedural list and checkpoints utilized in our study (Table 1a) is an example of how we tried to achieve improved patient flow by building quality into our process.

Standardization, a key Lean tool, helped improve our ability to provide care.  Without standardization, there is likely to be great variability in how work is done, and lead to re-work and reduce the quality of care provided.  We decided that all the necessary information needed to be available for the physicians and therapists early in the process with a high degree of accuracy to improve quality and efficiency.  To do this, we standardized the way information was requested and collected (Table 3).  When accurate information is not available the process of caring for a patient is simply halted and leads to re-work.

Continuous improvement is to create an environment in which all workers continuously seek and implement innovative ideas, based on the customer's requirements and built upon the previous level of standardization[4].  As we made the initial changes, it became evident that the clerical staff, who often received the first call from referring clinicians, needed education on medical terminology and scheduling procedures.  For example, referring clinicians who referred to their patients as having a "bone lesion" were not being scheduled into a same day consult appointment.  This may seem trivial at first glance; however to those unfamiliar with the terminology can be confusing and lead to process errors.  As our staff became aware that this meant the same as a "bone metastases," patients were appropriately routed onto the bone and brain metastases appointment times.

As with any new initiative, there are challenges and barriers that need to be addressed.  When individuals are told that the roots of Lean Thinking comes from the automobile manufacturing industry, argument is often made that people are not automobiles, and thus each require special, individualized, and customized attention.  As we learned about the principles of Lean Thinking, we gradually understood that there is a great amount of inefficiency in the processes of delivering clinical care which could benefit greatly from redesign with a process mentality around the needs of the customer.

There are several important limitations to note in this report of application of Lean Thinking within the Department of Radiation Oncology.  First, this study was done in a single health system, and more specifically within a single clinic site, thus the specific application and results may not be generalizable to other institutions and sites.  For example, other organizations may have different baseline metrics and a different set of current process flows, which would lead to other target implementation ideas.  Second, we have reported on our ability to improve the efficiency of delivering this type of radiation therapy care, and an ad hoc analysis did not reveal any reduction in the quality of care provided to our patients for this service or other services provided by the department of Radiation Oncology, however we did not formally assess quality metrics related to this process nor its potential effects on the other services provided by our department.  Third, our study evaluated the process and the opportunity to improve on the operational efficiencies to provide timely and quality radiation therapy with the perspective of providing this service to our patients as the customers.  Referring physicians are also customers to this process as they are the patient's advocates; and although we have not heard of any criticism of the process changes from referring physicians, we did not formally measure this.  Lastly, within the limits of this brief report, we are not able to provide a detailed account of Lean Thinking application for this project.  Instead, we have chosen to report a few of the highlights of our journey and the major tools in applying Lean Thinking concepts within our department.  For more detailed information, additional examples in health care, and readings about Lean Thinking, readers are referred to other references [5, 8, 10, 12, 16-18].

Within the Department of Radiation Oncology at the University of Michigan, we have improved the way we deliver radiation therapy to our patients with bone and brain metastasis utilizing the principles and tools of Lean Thinking.  We believe that this pilot study will continue to improve the way care is provided for this subgroup of patients.  Furthermore, we believe that as our department learns and becomes more proficient with Lean Thinking, we will implement these ideas and concepts in our everyday practice of delivering care.  Lean Thinking emphasizes the need for continuous experimentation by the front line workers to improve and standardize the work flow, a core concept established and advanced by Toyota Motor Corporation[15, 16, 19, 20].  We will continue to monitor and improve this process of providing same day evaluation and treatment for bone and brain metastases; and we will apply the Lean Thinking ideas to other areas of our clinical care delivery service such as three-dimensional treatments, charge procedures and daily treatment flow. The real challenge is to go beyond the simple application of Lean tools, which is what we do now, and to develop a Lean culture of continuous questioning and improvement.

Acknowledgment: This manuscript is dedicated in memory of Dr. John Long, who helped facilitate the Radiation Oncology group’s first Lean Process Improvement session. Without his coaching and guidance of the three day session the department members would not have been inspired to dive into a complete cultural change adventure.  We will always remember Dr. Long and his dedication in applying Lean Thinking to improve the way health care is provided.

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