Bringing LEAN Into Everyone's Reach with Catena

To help bring LEAN into the reach of all organizations, AveraOpEx is pleased to add Catena® to its list of offerings. Catena provides a proven fifteen-step LEAN implementation system with a set of software tools and virtual consulting support that can have your organization or department seeing results in weeks, not years.

The pressure to improve has never been greater. Insurance and government payers are no longer willing to accept "cost plus" pricing. Rural hospitals must continuously find new ways to provide necessary services while reining in spiraling costs. Non-profit organizations can no longer afford to break even; they need to generate surpluses to remain competitive and to fund future growth. The tolerance for making mistakes is diminishing as evidenced by new Medicare/Medicaid rules. Hospitals will no longer be paid to treat the consequences of errors that can reasonably be prevented.

LEAN's relentless focus on eliminating waste and mistake-proofing make it well-suited for addressing these challenges. Using LEAN, it is possible to provide better patient care with higher quality outcomes and lower costs. Organizations from all corners of the world are implementing LEAN principles to benefit patients, physicians, nurses and other health care staff.

However, without the right guidance and support, LEAN can be deceptively difficult to implement. Among the top three obstacles often sited by managers, executives and other LEAN practitioners is the lack of implementation know-how. In the past, this has often meant having senseis, black-belts or other improvement consultants on-site to guide the organization through the transition. For many smaller organizations, this type of investment can seemingly put LEAN out of reach.

Where do I begin?

The start of any LEAN implementation involves going out and looking at your processes and work activities. Catena makes this easy by providing a systematic way to examine these activities and identify improvement opportunities. During this discovery phase, processes and activities are captured on video. Using the Catena software, the video is analyzed step-by-step to identify waste. As wastes are identified, improvements are captured to an improvement task list. Catena's reporting features to let you know how much activity is value-added (provides value to the customer/patient) and how much is some type of waste (such as waiting, walking, or handling). These reports can generate additional discovery and lead to more improvement ideas.

With improvement ideas in hand, Catena helps organizations with the implementation process. Tools are available to help identify which activities occur most frequently so that improvement efforts are focused on processes and activities that will have the most impact. Scheduling and line balancing tools are available to help your staff to demand and achieve optimal flow. Catena also includes decision making aids to help select the best solutions in the face of multiple important evaluation criteria. In addition, off-site virtual web based consulting is available to help teams understand LEAN principles and work through difficult issues. You never have to wonder what to do next.

How can I sustain the results?

The ability to measure and sustain the improvements is an important part of any improvement process. Integrated into the Catena system is the ability to track performance by the hour and by the month. Downtime tracking allows organizations to quickly identify issues that are preventing the organization from reaching its full potential. Through the use of Performance Scout™, this data can be collected remotely using handheld computing devices.

The pressure to improve has never been greater, but Catena can help you achieve immediate results to overcome today's health care challenges with a minimum initial investment. Its integration of analysis, implementation and performance measurement, along with virtual consulting support, can bring LEAN know-how within reach and provide your continuous improvement efforts a significantly better chance for success.

 

 

 

 

 

 

¹ 2004-2007 "State of Lean Survey", Lean Enterprise Institute (www.lean.org)