The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center is an academic medical center with more than 20 centers and institutes across central Ohio.
The nationally ranked organization has more than 1,300 beds and saw more than 1.7 million outpatient visits last year, as well as over 130,000 emergency department visits.
Not having the correct supplies at the right time has a clear and direct impact on patient care. In recent Press Ganey surveys at The Ohio State University-Wexner Medical Center (OSUWMC), nurses responded to the statement “I have the supplies I need to do my job,” as one of the top 10 areas of dissatisfaction. The issue was assumed to be either a management problem or an issue with the employees known as supply coordinators, who are responsible for replenishing supplies for individual nursing units. Frustrated with their inability to easily access the supplies they needed, nursing leadership went to the organization’s new chief supply chain officer Hal Mueller to find a solution, which is where Patricia Hoch became involved.
FIXING A "PROCESS PROBLEM" IN SUPPLY CHAIN
A 12-year veteran at OSUWMC with a background in the Six Sigma method of business process improvement, Hoch now serves as the director of distribution and logistics for the organization. She knew that the issues being faced by OSUWMC couldn’t be solved with just another supply chain technology or shelving solution.
Hoch started process mapping, interviewing employees and conducting time studies, where she discovered that the organization didn’t have a “people problem” but rather a “process problem.”
The root causes of the “process problem” were manifold. For one, OSUWMC’s supply coordinators were utilizing a par-cart push inventory system and spending huge amounts of timing estimating inventory levels. This “healthcare traditional” replenishment process is problematic and can lead to stock-outs and excess. “We had an entire inventory system based on how good a guesser you were,” Hoch said.
Further, supplies were often disorganized or hidden because there wasn’t a standard for supply room design, which frequently led to confusion and re-work.
Hoch evaluated several options ranging from supply chain technology to hardware and custom cabinetry, but those solutions would only fill the gaps in the short term and not help with facilitating a holistic process and lean transformation. This led Hoch to a discussion with BlueBin’s founder CEO Charles Hodge and CMO Robb Swan about BlueBin’s lean-replenishment system.
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