The healthcare industry is one of the most demanding businesses out there. People trust their lives to medical facilities and they expect a high level of care each time that they are treated while also expecting reasonable prices. In order to make this possible the healthcare industry needs to become more and more efficient to continue offering quality services at reasonable rates. This is known as continuous process improvement, and is the cornerstone of the lean concept that is being used to improve businesses around the world.
What’s Lean?
Lean is an optimization technique that removes waste from a business anywhere that it can. By removing waste, such as excess paperwork and unnecessary tasks the business becomes more profitable and can offer a higher value of service to the customer. Lean training and regular improvements and careful audits help businesses continue to improve over time, instead of stagnating and declining.
Improve to Keep up With Changing Technology
In the healthcare industry there are constantly new developments and technology improvements. With each new piece of machinery and new process that is added into a hospital or doctor’s office new systems have to be put in place to manage them and keep treatments to patients flowing smoothly. That means that lean practices and continuous process improvement needs to happen in a healthcare facility, simply to keep optimizing the new practices and technologies that enter the system over time. Without regular improvements inefficient practices would eventually take over the facility and slow it down dramatically while degrading the quality of service that can be delivered.
Effectively Serve a Growing Population
Each member of the population needs to be provided healthcare by their country in one form or another. Healthcare facilities are not growing and expanding at the rate that the human population is. Think about the number of local facilities in your area that provide healthcare and how they have expanded in the last twelve years. Many of these buildings probably look pretty similar and house a similar number of staff members. Even though hospitals aren’t changing dramatically the human population is. The population was believed to be at around 6 billion people in 1999 and by 2011 it was crossing over the 7 billion milestone. When the population increases by around 16 percent in just a little over a decade it becomes hard for medical facilities to keep up. As the population grows the burden on healthcare systems increases. Standing facilities have to work more efficiently to keep up with all the people who need help. Sure some new facilities will sprout up over time, but not enough to keep up with growth. That’s why it’s vital for each facility to become more efficient. You’re healthcare facility will need to see more patients next year than it did this year and that trend is only going to increase along with the human population.
Efficient Hospitals Prosper and Build a Positive Name
There is nothing more important for a hospital than their image. A hospital that’s known for delivering quality care in a timely manner is going to be prized in the community and receive as much business as it can handle. The facilities that are known for taking too long, and making errors are avoided whenever possible and patients aren’t willing to pay them anymore than they absolutely have to.
By enhancing your hospital and helping patients get quality treatment as quickly as possible you bolster profits in a few different ways and really improve the environment for everyone involved. First more patients are interested in coming to see you, and you’re efficient enough to treat more patients throughout the day thanks to a quicker patient turnaround. The second reason is because you can charge more money for healthcare, and patients will be willing to pay it thanks to the high level of service that you are providing. By making your company more efficient you make it much easier to compete and allow your hospital or medical office to prosper. Leading Edge Group is a lean consulting company helping hospitals improve to be more efficient and valuable to the community.