Reference no: EM133479680
Kaiser Process Re-design
After graduation, you are hired as an Operations Improvement Manager at Kaiser Healthcare. As your first assignment, you are sent to a hospital to assist in an improvement effort at the emergency room check-in area. Patients have sent feedback that highlights excessive waiting times cause un-needed patient discomfort in the initial screening process. Wait times of 3-hours are average and patients have begun suing the hospital for pain and suffering.
As you walk the process you take down the following data:
Step 1-Patient Check-in: You count 3 stations for patients to check-in and note that each station takes 10 minutes per patient.
Step 2-Vitals Screening: 5 technicians take blood pressure, temperature, and other vitals at their stations. Each technician takes 20 minutes per patient.
Step 3-Nursing Review: There are 5 nurses assigned taking 30 minutes per patient. At this stage, you take down several notes about the nurses saying they are filling out redundant forms and have to walk to the printer at the other end of the hall. You ask how much time that the forms and printer take and are told that for each patient an average of 10-minutes is spent on the forms and printer.
Step 4-Doctor's Screening: There are 5 doctors that meet with the patient and read over the previous data. The doctors determine which department and room in the emergency area the patient should be sent to. The doctors make the patients as comfortable as possible. Each doctor takes 15 minutes per patient.
Step 5-Paperwork and insurance: 2 technicians collect information from the patient on insurance and contact information. They take 5 minutes per patient.
Step 6-Patient readied for treatment or movement to their room. 10 aids are able to move 20 patients per hour as needed.
You note that the records from the hospital show the majority of the poor patient feedback comes on Fridays from 5:00 PM till Midnight. That is where the highest demand is shown in the records as well. The demand on Fridays during that time is very high, at 12 patients per hour. Where is the constraint in the process? What is the maximum number of patients that can be seen in this system per hour?