Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Orchestrating the OR
One more procedure per room per
day
1/6/2009
Dr. med. Hank Schiffers, MD, MBA
Director Lean Europe, Middle East & Africa
Bert Hoffmann
Consultant Lean Europe, Middle East & Africa
©Stryker Corporation, 2009
Orchestrating the operating room Lean in healthcare vs. Lean for healthcare
Lean, originally known as Toyota production system, has
One more procedure per room per day been developed to solve production issues. All different
Introduction lean cultures chase the same eight different types of waste
In every healthcare system regardless of location or geo‐ in their attempt to reduce the unnecessary and create
graphy that my team has experienced throughout our ca‐ flow:
reers we heard one or more of the following statements
with respect to the management of operating rooms: 1. Overproduction
2. Movement
9 We need more staff 3. Inventory
9 We need more room 4. Over processing
9 We need more (financial) resources 5. Waiting
6. Correction
As we asked what the most prominent issues were we
7. Transportation
heard:
8. Unused creativity
9 Patient satisfaction scores are below expectations
All derivates such as Lean for service operations or admin‐
9 Achieving on‐time surgeries is problematic
istrative processes were tailored to be applied to specific
9 Reimbursement is challenging
conditions. While they shared the core believes of the clas‐
9 Staff and surgeons spend a lot of time waiting
sic lean, they differed in other ways. The major difference
9 Quality is variable –we are concerned about our
between services and production is that services are per‐
reputation
formed and consumed simultaneously. Unlike in produc‐
9 Working together with other professionals is creat‐
tion this results in the total inability to create even small
ing conflict
amounts of inventory in services to buffer variation in de‐
9 Staff is overworked (leading to high staff turnover)
mand.
9 Staff is on work‐related sick leave (back pain, etc)
When Lean was initially applied to healthcare the neces‐
If you have never heard any of these comments from your
sary adoption for the unique situations in healthcare was
staff, you likely have a firm understanding of the relation‐
not included. This resulted in “Lean in healthcare”. Some of
ships and obstacles encountered in transforming the OR
the results were significant but still healthcare staffs found
culture. However, you are likely a small minority, because
it difficult to create continuous improvement environ‐
most of us struggle with these challenges every day.
ments instead of just isolated improvements.
This article will provide you with some insight into how to
The work of Prof. Charles E. Noon and Joseph T. Crane,
have a sustained impact in transforming the culture of the
MD, MBA on emergency room management discovered
OR. Here are the takeaways you can expect:
recently that healthcare operations require the use of
9 Lean in healthcare vs. Lean for healthcare queuing theory to achieve true patient flow. Our group
9 Lean OR – key issues added Stryker´s decades of knowledge in how teams in the
o People operating room are created and motivated to work to‐
o Strategy to implement gether in an orchestrated fashion instead of creating con‐
9 Lean OR case study – make it work flicting targets between different professional groups.
o First steps
By combining these two factors we have been able to
o DATE Cycle
change Lean in healthcare to Lean for healthcare.
o Simulate current & future processes
o Implement flow
o Results
Lean OR – key issues Lean OR case study – make it work
All pictures, graphs and results described in the following
People make the difference sections are derived from two hospitals based in Germany.
In the operating room professionals from various educa‐
We chose a small 120‐bed hospital with three operating
tional, cultural and social backgrounds come together and
room theaters and a major hospital group to show that all
collaborate to achieve one goal: Create a better outcome
hospitals can create breakthrough benefits from using
for the patient.
lean. Both hospitals had never used Lean techniques be‐
As a result of this Lean has to answer the question to all of fore.
these groups “What is in it for me?” for all these groups in
First steps – Scoping the project & selecting the team
order to achieve their involvement. In the OR, unlike in Waiting time during hospital processes is meaningful to
other organizations there are no clearly defined reporting patients, creates pressure on all professionals and reduces
lines to help ensure alignment of all staff members to one the number of procedures and the revenue a hospital can
ultimate goal. create. Project metrics were focused on
To begin a successful transition to Lean for healthcare it is
• Inventory (one time) cost reduction
essential to properly scope the first project and select the
• Increased throughput measured as procedures per
right team. The project that is scoped should be meaning‐
day per room
ful to both patients and staff with rapid return on invest‐
ment, measurable key performance indicators and a short Selection of Core Lean Team – The SCross
project duration. An ideal hospital lean team should always include mem‐
bers of management, nurses and physicians as a minimum
When selecting the team consideration should be given to
requirement to ensure you have all of the necessary input
including someone from each of the different professional
from different points of view. Make sure patients, staff
groups, their key opinion leaders and hypercritical team
and all shareholders can see the benefits to them of the
members. This is why initial people selection for training is
process you choose to address. Then select your long‐term
best done using the S‐Cross (Stream Cross) method.
Lean team by using the S‐Cross.
Strategy to implement
1. Draw a patient’s pathway (from 50,000 feet) verti‐
If I were asked what would be the best strategy to imple‐
cally and add to the left all professional groups and
ment Lean in the OR I would respond that there is no ideal
to the right all functional areas that provide direct
world. It really does not make a difference whether you
or indirect services to the patient’s care
approach the situation with a top down, down top (gueril‐
(Illustration 1).
la), middle multidirectional, professional group or focus
2. Select the bottleneck area that you want to im‐
area. You will face challenges and could experience either
prove or eliminate (Illustration 2).
success or failure with all of these approaches.
3. Mark all involved professionals and functional
Our group learned that, no matter which approach you areas (Illustration 2).
choose, the key success factors are:
After completing this chart multiply the number of people
• Listening to your staff’s concerns in each group that is involved by the number of shifts that
• Absolute project visibility and transparency to oth‐ you are running. This ensures smooth project flow without
er members of your staff interruption. You have now identified the number of staff
• Excellent project planning members and their background that will be required to
start Lean management for healthcare in your environ‐
• Short initial project times
ment.
• Hard measurable key performance indicators
• Accountability
• A determination to never give up
The DATE cycle
In most ORs the primary question is: Is this effort worth it?
This is why we created the DATE cycle to use when running
your first projects. The DATE cycle is a structured plan to
deliver, after a preliminary period of four weeks of prepa‐
ration and scheduling, a one week rapid improvement
event that results in full implementation of the new
process.
Illustration 3: DATE ‐ cycle
Illustration 1: SCross ‐ empty
Date Cycle and Date Improvement Event
The DATE cycle consists of four phases:
• Define – Define and Scope the project
• Analyze ‐ Analyze the data then prioritize
• Train selected employees in Lean Techniques using
simulation and collect their improvement ideas.
• Execute ‐ Apply ideas to the real world in three
days
Simulate current & future processes
We found it extremely useful to simulate OR processes
prior to changing them in order to create a feeling of trust
among the team members in the change process. This is
especially important during the first project before the
staff has personally experienced the impact of Lean. In all
OR projects we run a simulation two to three times during
the training session. The simulation can be tailored to each
individual hospital setting including:
• The actual OR layout (theaters, rooms, inventory
locations, walking distances)
Illustration 2: SCross with bottleneck in therapeutic area (OR)
• Original time data (setup, surgical, etc)
• OR staff (OR manager, surgeons, anesthetist, PA’s,
surgical nurses, cleaning staff, etc.)
• Inventory locations Value stream mapping, to understand in detail what the
• X ray equipment and locations current process looks like and what the future state will be.
• Sterilization department
The first run of the simulation uses the current real world
setting of the specific hospital customer and is performed
before participants learn about Lean. The following one to
two simulation runs occur after classroom teaching has
been delivered and participants have the opportunity to
change the simulation according to their findings. During
these simulations the hospital team usually develops 30‐60
different improvement ideas that can be used as a starting
point for the real world execution phase. Picture 1: Value stream mapping event
30 days Audit
Measure KPI
Learn
Table 1: DATE event ‐ One week ‐ one solution
Techniques Visual management and working aids to reduce search
When you move from the classroom period to the execu‐ time variability, improve ease of use and enhance safety
tion phase of the DATE cycle the team has acquired know‐ for employees & patients.
ledge of lean techniques and has a set of previously de‐
fined improvement ideas. Initially the team members apply
classic Lean techniques such as:
Picture 2: Visual management applied to anaesthesia cart
6S and statistical analysis to make sure everything has a Spaghetti diagram showing a 74% reduction of walking
place and can be found at its place in right amounts when‐ distance after the DATE event:
ever it is needed.
OR 1
Surgical supply
X
Supply
X
Supply OR 2
X
Supply Surgical supply
Picture 3: 6S event applied to surgical area
Spaghetti diagrams to illustrate walking distances between
locations for a single process or server before execution of
the DATE event. These diagrams show the travel which
induces variation to time sensitive processes before and
after the DATE event. Illustration 4 displays the before Illustration 5: Spaghetti diagram of instruments supply after DATE
event
situation:
Lean OR results
Applying Lean for healthcare delivers results that regularly
outperform any expectation. When asked in the beginning
of the event to guess the percentage of inventory reduc‐
tion that the team would achieve during the first week the
average answer is 15%. To avoid confusion with currencies
we display the following numbers in units of materials.
This is the number of material units in surgical inventory
before and after the event for surgical materials:
Illustration 4: Spaghetti diagram of instruments supply before DATE
OR
event
After
Before
Before After
OR 7262 1312
Table 2: Reduction in OR supplies
A reduction by 82%.
Followed by anesthesia inventory: A 94% reduction.
Anesthesia
After
Before
Before After
Anesthesia 17325 1045
Table 3: Reduction in Anesthesia supplies
Implement flow – one more per room per day
Implementation of flow in the OR includes reduction of
variability and queuing resulting from poor scheduling, lack
of staff availability, slow material flow, variable set up
times, unclear cleaning cycles and many other factors. In
addition it is important to create flow from the ER to re‐
duce variability that emergency patients add to OR
processes. Fast track and super fast track systems allow
you to significantly reduce variation and queuing for well
defined patient groups. As a result you will obtain results
as described in Table 2: One more procedure per room per
day.