Course 3. Value Stream Design for Lean Health Care Systems (4-days)

This course first addresses pull mechanisms useful in controlling patient, material, and information flows in health care systems. Hands on simulations built around realistic contexts will illustrate underlying principles and how to supplement the technique with visual scheduling boards. Subsequently the course covers value stream mapping. Students will execute a case study where they map the current state of a realistic health care value stream and then they establish a future state plan that eliminates wasteful operations, improves the patient experience, reduces service and waiting times, improves efficiency, and enhances other performance measures. One such case study involves patient flow from in-patient care to and from test laboratories (e.g., radiology and echo labs), the processing and communication of test results, control of patient flow through a central transportation system, and timely communication of results to impact patient care and external processes such as patient discharge. It is based on a real world case and is documented with narrative descriptions, photographs, and physical models of the current state system.

Specific topics include:

• Principles of pull-based control of patient, material, and information flows.
• Classes of relevant pull mechanisms: product-specific, route-specific and CONWIP and their use in assisting functionality of heath care scheduling systems and patient/information flow management
• Current state mapping icons and data collection
• Classes of waste in a health care delivery environment
• Execution of a value stream mapping and lean operations transformation activity
• Future state mapping principles: definition of the value proposition, waste elimination and enhancing value delivery, work flow structural principles, work aggregation, design and integration of scheduling and operations control systems, communicating and implementing the future state plan.