After a successful use of lean processes to streamline its emergency department throughput, Cincinnati-based TriHealth executives got interested in imbedding lean processes elsewhere in the system. So, the system started offering an executive lean champion training program.
At the Becker's Hospital Review 5th Annual Meeting in Chicago May 17, Linda Galvin, director of performance improvement and consulting with TriHealth, gave an overview of the program during a presentation.
The five-month program is in its third year and is offered twice a year. It involves four meetings that cover didactic material and interactive exercises, the completion of a project, a final exam and a mentoring program.
Several things have helped the lean training program become a success. Ms. Galvin shared the following:
• Mentoring sessions. The mentor program contributes greatly to the overall lean training program success. Executives from previous sessions serve as mentors to leaders currently going through the program. The mentors review assignments and can share learnings and challenges from their experience with the program. Conference calls, as opposed to in-person meetings, have worked well for TriHealth, according to Ms. Galvin.
• Partnering physicians with operational personnel. Leaders in the program are put in pairs to complete their projects, and TriHealth has found success in pairing physicians and operations personnel together.
• Project sharing. At every meeting, the pairs share updates to the rest of the group on how their project is progressing. This helps hold them accountable and keep the projects on a timeline.
• Off-site location. Having the meetings off-site helped cut down on the number of phone calls and pages that had to be answered, Ms. Galvin said.
As the program has developed, TriHealth has run into some challenges, including the following:
• Picking the right time of day. "You can't please everyone," Ms. Galvin said. The first group had their monthly meetings on Fridays in the morning. After gathering feedback at the end of the program, sessions are now on Thursdays from 4:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. "This seems to work the best to get people to show up," she said.
• Engaging surgeons. Many surgeons end up being late, as they tend to be finishing up surgeries at the end of the day. To work around this problem, the first half hour the program is updates on projects, so those who do show up late do not miss any new material from the session.
• Scheduling mentor calls. Since those going through the program and the mentors themselves are high-level executives and physicians, their schedules tend to be packed and finding a time that works for everyone can be challenging, according to Ms. Galvin.
• Project scope. A few of the projects the leaders took on had too large of a scope and were difficult to complete, which can cause participants to get confused and discouraged.
TriHealth has seen great successes from the projects completed by program participants. For example, the system has increased pneumoccal vaccination rates and improved communication with primary care physicians after rapid response team events as a result of the lean projects.