Over the last decade significant strides have occurred in healthcare to elicit & listen to the expectations of our patient customers. In recent weeks, I had the experience of working with a group of caregivers to design a new process and physical space for pre & post procedure patient care, followed by an experience of staying with a friend before & after a procedure at a major teaching hospital. Interestingly, the second experience validated the design work of the previous week.  

The Lean Healthcare team started the event by attempting to understand the voice of the customer, from patient and family member stories. Several themes emerged from these stories; being informed and known by the caregivers, the need for privacy, space to move around for both the staff and the family, and amenities for family members all rose to the surface. The Director validated the consistency of these stories with the formal & informal feedback received from patients and their families. Lean Healthcare Design solutions centered around having the same staff and physical space for patients and staff, privacy provided by fixed walls instead of curtains or cubicles, flexibility with equipment on wheels and enough space to easily move around the patient.   

In particular the one design concept which stood out for me when I later was sitting with a friend was the need for privacy in pre/post procedure areas. Cubicle curtains were worthless in providing privacy to patients. Curtains by design have a gap to enter into the cubicle and frequently the gap is open at all the wrong times, leaving the patient feeling exposed. Anything being said behind the curtain can generally be heard throughout the unit.  

This simple example reinforces the need to involve our patients and family members as we use Lean Healthcare methodologies to design or improve processes. There are a variety of ways to obtain the voice of the customer when designing new processes, such as patient satisfaction surveys & complaint data, interviews, focus groups and patients as team participants. The key is to invite the customer’s voice into the process, listen to what is being said and respond by building in value as defined by the customer. 

This week’s blog was written by Maureen Sullivan, a senior associate at HPP. Maureen has over 28 years of healthcare experience in clinical nursing, management and quality leadership to Healthcare Performance Partners. Previously Maureen was the director of lean and quality improvement for Exempla Lutheran Medical Center and successfully led the implementation of Lutheran’s Lean production system from 2004 to 2008 demonstrating improvements in clinical quality, employee engagement, and financial stewardship. As a registered nurse, Maureen’s clinical experience is in medical surgical nursing with progressive responsibilities in nursing management at the front line, middle management, and administrative levels. Maureen began her quality management career in 1996, coordinating, facilitating and managing improvement and accreditation programs at a departmental, site and system level within Exempla Healthcare. Maureen has an associate degree in Nursing from Joliet Junior College in Joliet, Illinois and a bachelor of science in nursing with an emphasis in healthcare management from Metropolitan State College in Denver, Colorado. Maureen achieved certification from National Association for Healthcare Quality, certified professional in healthcare quality (CPHQ), Colorado State University in process mapping, and University of Michigan in lean healthcare.