Improving Surgery Scheduling through Lean Six Sigma Kaizen Techniques

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Improving Surgery Scheduling through Lean Six Sigma

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Client: A leading international medical center with locations in three countries
Industry: Healthcare
Service: Kaizen

Challenge:

Growing volume pressure
Lack of standards for scheduling surgical cases
Lack of a unified document for scheduling
Located off-site without direct access to surgical services staff members

Solutions:
Utilized a Sigma Kaizen Breakthrough event with goals to:

Increase scheduling accuracy and efficiency
Improve surgeon, patient, and staff satisfaction
Enhance communication to all hospital departments
Reduce room volatility and rework/movement of cases

Results:

Reduced process steps to schedule a surgery from 70% to 37% improvement
Lead time for the new process was reduced from 97 minutes per case to only 48 minutes per case – just over 50% improvement
Redesigned several forms to better meet the needs of staff members and reduce time to complete

The Surgery Scheduling Department faced many challenges including the lack of standards for scheduling surgical cases, lack of a unified document for scheduling and the fact that they were located off-site without direct access to surgical services staff members.

The client identified a cross-functional team with members from the scheduling department, surgical services clinical staff and staff who manned the surgical control desk. The team was trained in the Sigma Kaizen Breakthrough methodology and set goals for the 4.5-day event. Those goals included:

Increase scheduling accuracy and efficiency
Improve surgeon, patient and staff satisfaction
Enhance communication to all hospital departments
Reduce room volatility and rework/movement of cases

The team utilized several Lean Six Sigma tools to examine the current state, which included process mapping, brainstorming, and completion of an Impact/Difficulty Matrix, along with the development of process metrics.

Following their analysis, the team designed a “future state” process incorporating their ideas for improvement. Additionally, the team including feedback gained from customers of the process, primarily clerical staff in surgeons’ offices. Process changes included development of a reservation ticket, implementation of case standards by surgeon and by procedure, communication standards for booking cases, utilization of text pagers for staff members during add-on case events and revision of the add-on case ticket.

In addition to the reduction of process steps, standardization allowed the team to reduce decision points in the process from 13 to four. The multiple decision points placed artificial delays in the process adding to frustration for all involved.

One team member noted, “I had no idea the schedulers had to jump through so many hoops.”