Quality benchmarks don't go far enough, former hospital CEO Kevin L. Shrake suggested in a Hospital Impact blog post yesterday. "Healthcare organizations have not set the bar high enough in our pursuit of perfection. Many of our quality benchmarks should be 100 percent, not something less, for standards such as operating on the correct leg!"
And who should lead the perfection process than none other than the hospital CEO? Executives can use the Toyota Production System, which blends Lean and Six Sigma techniques for quality and safety improvement to eliminate waste in time, errors, transportation, inventory and processing. Hospitals whose CEOs have led the pursuit of perfect safety using the ideas of Toyota have realized between 50 percent and 67 percent reductions per year in incidences of harm reaching workers and patients, Shrake noted. Still, Shrake suggested it's not enough for a C-suite member to issue down a directive, but rather, "It must become a part of everyday life for each employee. This requires leadership and not directives." Blog post