Strategic Value Analysis In Healthcare
STRATEGIC VALUE ANALYSISTM NEWSLETTER
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Strategic Value Analysis In Healthcare |
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STRATEGIC VALUE ANALYSISTM NEWSLETTER |
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“Waste and Inefficiencies In Your Healthcare Organization’s Value Chains Are Holding Back Peak Performance of Your Healthcare Workers.” A recent study by the Murphy Leadership Institute has documented that, “wasteful work (and inefficiencies in healthcare operations’ value chains) affects every job role, from nurses to pharmacists to managers to techs to assistants to housekeepers. It can include such activities as completing multiple forms for the same task, inefficient shift-to-shift or departmental reports, medication unavailable or delayed, and searching for a misplaced record.” All of these transgressors that are pointed out by this study stem from inept hand-offs, massive rework and huge information gaps at our healthcare organizations today. These wasteful and inefficient practices are surfacing at the same time that healthcare executives are looking for ways to combat staffing shortages and decreasing operating margins and clearly give the message that many of the answers to these challenges can be found RIGHT IN THEIR OWN BACK YARD!
Hand-offs, Rework And Information Gaps Are The Transgressors As stated previously, Healthcare organizations have literally have millions of inept HAND-OFFS and massive REWORK (revising, correcting, changing or handling a task more than once) that can be as high as 35% and huge INFORMATION GAPS (information not being available, accurate and timely when needed) can be as high as 68% daily at healthcare organizations in the United States. With this evidence in mind healthcare executives should be attacking the waste and inefficiency in their healthcare organization’s value chains with a vengeance. YET, FROM MY OBSERVATION THIS ISN’T HAPPENING! Most healthcare organization’s approach to managing their organization’s value chain is episodic, event oriented and reactionary in nature. Healthcare organizations only react when complaints from internal or external customers rise to a level of noise that is deafening to their ears and not before. As an example, one healthcare organization we worked with was losing hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in ER admissions, because of bottlenecks in their patient flow, but waited for over a year to do anything about it until their ER physicians almost went on strike. A better way to manage a healthcare organization’s value chain is to have a management system with a unifying philosophy, based on value which continuously evaluates in a strategic manner the worth and relevance of the products, services, technologies, systems and processes that a healthcare organization employs. This system would recognize how the product, service, technology, system and process fits into the hierarchy of healthcare organizations overall strategic plan. Then and only then can a healthcare organization be assured that all the waste and inefficiencies will be continuously driven out of its value chain.
The Search For “Best Value” Is A Never-Ending Journey! The search for “Best Value” is a powerful concept (which is a never ending journey) that has been given many definitions over the years, but only rarely has this philosophy been put into action at our nations’ healthcare organizations. Contrariwise, healthcare organizations have decided instead to embrace Six Sigma, activity-based management and re-engineering (to name only a few management techniques that have gained acceptance over the last two decades), which are only tools that can and should be utilized for the search for “Best Value” at your healthcare organization. Nonetheless, the best TIME TESTED and PROVEN technique that can and must be employed in your search for “Best Value” is VALUE ANALYSIS, if you want to really get it right the first time. The father of value analysis, Larry Miles, tells us that VALUE ANALYSIS, “…is a disciplined (management)… system, attuned to one specific need (or goal): accomplishing (and identifying) the (required) functions that the customer needs and wants…,” no more or no less than is necessary to fulfill the customers’ requirements, thereby, bringing about the acknowledgement of “Best Value” in our customer’s eyes. In just these few words Larry Miles has defined the CONCEPT OF VALUE that he advanced during his lifetime. A search that is never-ending and ever-lasting because our customer’s requirements are ever-changing at an accelerated pace every year. If you are looking for a management system that can be easily understood accepted and embraced by your management and employees, that will drive out all waste and inefficiency in your value chain and will quickly adapt with changing times of flux and flow and will never become obsolete, then you need to embrace the value analysis methodology as your first defense in your battle to continuously maintain and improve your bottom line results.
About the Author
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COPYRIGHT 2003 - THE HCP GROUP, LTD. - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED |
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September
11, 2003
by
Robert T. Yokl, President