Front-line hospital staff as daily problem solvers

Guest post by Marcelo Zottolo, lean transformation specialist with Lee Memorial Health System in southwest Florida

Want to drive performance? Stop telling your front-line staff what to do and engage them in daily problem solving.

One of the biggest wastes in healthcare, aside from the wasteful spending, is the waste of not reaching to your front-line staff for daily problem solving.

At Cape Coral Hospital, in southwest Florida, we have been experimenting with daily improvement huddles in the emergency department. These are five- to 10-minute stand-up meetings, twice a day, to review service, safety and quality performance. It also provides staff-generated opportunities and ideas for improvement.

Through partnership with the Lean Transformation Office, we conducted a value mapping workshop that included training and the deployment of a daily improvement huddle board in the ED. In the past, typical objectives of such a workshop would include reducing left without been seen rate, door-to-doc, length of stay in the department, etc.

Read the full commentary at Hospital Impact