Health Affairs article on ThedaCare's Lean Processes

This is what I have been advocating from the start and now Health Affairs, the prestigious journal on health policy, has published an article on their practices.

The link-
http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/full/28/5/1343?ijkey=kECL9wF9SR8IE&keytype=ref&siteid=healthaff

This spells out the successes of ThedaCare and lessons for health care reform across America.

Below are small excerpts from the article
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Here's the abstract- U.S. taxpayers waste far too much money on health care that is merely average or worse. Some health care providers, including ThedaCare, a major Wisconsin health care company, are using the tools of lean manufacturing to eliminate millions of dollars of waste that obstructs the provision of effective medicine. ThedaCare studies care delivery processes to improve care and lower costs. Lessons from lean manufacturing and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement are lowering incidence of preterm births, improving heart attack response rates, and changing the way care is delivered in hospitals to a collaborative, team-based approach.

ThedaCare's results- Since Collaborative Care began with a pilot unit in 2007, we have cared for 2,400 people and recorded dramatic improvement in patient satisfaction, quality performance, and medication reconciliation (Exhibit 1). The cost of care in a Collaborative Care ward is 30 percent less than in a traditional ward. These data convinced ThedaCare board members to convert all hospital beds to Collaborative Care. This decision was projected to improve the buildings’ net present value by 63 percent, or more than $25 million.

Conclusion-
The changes we have described involve a fundamental shift in the way people think about and deliver care. It is not just about saving money or doing less with more. This is about returning to the core scientific principles of modern medicine.

We begin with a hypothesis that performance could be better. Then we change the process, measure it, study its effect, and incorporate it into daily work. Before we can convince other health care organizations to join us in radically improving performance, however, there must be some incentive. If we prove that lean health care will put more money in a hospital’s pocket, only to have Medicare take it out of another pocket, we will not enlist many converts. Similarly, if a national insurance plan continues Medicare’s rules, paying more money for inefficient health care, we will get a lot more inefficient care. Quality will only thrive when quality is demanded.

There is much more than money at stake. We must find a way to reward and encourage more efficient, better-quality health care, and that’s what we will get.