LEAN for Clinical Redesign

The purpose of the Clinical Redesign Collaborative Quality Initiative (CQI) is to support and facilitate health care transformation through process improvement initiatives, utilizing LEAN Thinking principles.

The LEAN CQI is designed to assist provider organizations (PO) with developing strategies for creating efficient practice transformation as well as to implement components of the Patient Centered Medical Home (PCMH) model.

This LEAN Thinking model provides professional coaching and detailed tools to assist primary care physicians to implement PCMH principles into practice. The emphasis is on improving a practice unit’s effectiveness and efficiency in workflow, resulting in increased efficiencies and increased quality.

Purpose:    

• To coach practices in the LEAN process in an effort to facilitate successful implementation of PCMH, while improving quality and efficiency of clinical practice.
• To cultivate internal (PO level) and external (practice level) LEAN support for ongoing transformation of clinical practice.
• To transform the delivery of patient care through collaborative problem solving in the primary care setting.
• To improve clinical practices and core operational processes through the application of LEAN thinking tools and approaches

Objectives:

• Focus on one of the following areas: Chronic Disease management – asthma or diabetes, or  preventative care
• Focus on implementing and sustaining positive cultural outcomes within a practice
• Focus on identifying challenges that hinder effective and efficient health care and increase activities that increase value for patient.

Using Lean Thinking principles and methods, and guided by the Lean Coordinating Center, participating practices are:

• Improving diabetes management - patient care, registry establishment, and test tracking
• Improving provider accessibility
• Improving throughput of patients from registration through checkout
• Improving office management, care management, and PCMH capability implementation
• Introducing Lean principles as part of new hire orientation
• Developing a “change management team” at each office
• Improving lab throughput processes
• Streamlining and removing waste from the telephone messaging process

Acknowledgements:
Lean for Clinical Redesign:
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan Lean