Leaning Forward
For most of my adult life I have known that I have two “professional loves”…sharing my experiences (and knowledge) and using those experiences to help others address their professional challenges so that they can move their organization forward. And, luckily, I have been able to build a successful career by doing what I love! Life is grand! And for the last 15+ years, I have been able to concentrate a great deal of my time within the Healthcare industry. In my mind there are few industries where process improvement is more needed, and even fewer areas where it is more difficult!
Why do I say that? Well, lets look at the challenges facing healthcare in the US today…
- Increasing Demand due to our aging population
- Unsustainably high cost of healthcare in the United States
- In 2012 the US “spent two and a half times more than most developed nations in the world” according to PBS (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/health-costs-how-the-us-compares-with-other-countries/). The last 10 years have not improved this to any great extent.
- Reimbursements for healthcare services have been declining as a result.
- Variation inherent to a service industry like healthcare (service times, demand, etc.)
- Variation causes capacity planning to be extremely difficult.
- Variation also makes process improvement efforts to appear to be “hit or miss” (with way more misses).
All of these challenges exist to one extent or another within every aspect of healthcare. I’m aware of this because I’ve had the pleasure to teach and work with very many healthcare organizations over the last 15+ years: from small practices to large hospitals; from small emergency departments to extremely large/busy ones; from specialty treatment practices to non-specialty/general treatment practices to labs and pharmacies that support those practices; from outpatient surgery centers to emergent surgery rooms; from treatment practices to prevention practices; and with individuals from the “C-Suites” to providers at all levels and even to all manner of healthcare process support (environmental, food service, etc.). And while all have faced challenges that are unique to their individual situations, all have also had similar wants and needs (largely due to the challenges listed above), and ALL have inspired me to become the best resource I could possibly be to them because their work is just that important!
But I have also come to realize that there are lots of others out there “selling” themselves as healthcare improvement support resources without being so inspired – leading to lots of process improvement efforts that are doing more harm than good. And, again, the work done by healthcare professionals is just too important for that! My sincere hope is that these posts will help with the incredibly important work that healthcare professionals are providing – while also opening a conduit to questions and informative rapport related to process improvement in this difficult and challenging environment.
So, if you are reading this post and anything I have written so far has moved you to do so, I invite you to reach out to me and open that conduit to a dialogue related to this incredibly difficult, yet important, challenge. I’d love to be of service to you! Thank you!