Mass General Case free essay sample

1 . The primary challenges in improving operating processes in a health care environment, particularly Mass General Hospital, include maintaining quality care, finding ways to reduce costs without compromising patient services, maintaining quality of conformance, and creating an environment where all departments are working in conjunction of one another. Improving operating processes in a healthcare environment is an important objective and one which can bring many challenges. Hospitals need to assurance their patients that their care is the top riority and corners are not being cut in an effort to reduce costs. The challenge arises when finding ways to maintain the standard but reduce costs. Another challenge, once a process has been established, is making sure this product/service is being delivered according to the design specifications. This may be because of difficulties with inter-department communications, resistance to change, or support from employees. Without every stakeholder on the same page, improving an operating process is a challenge. We will write a custom essay sample on Mass General Case or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page 2. In the case of Mass General Hospital, a care path can be described as an pplication of process management with optimal sequencing and timing of interventions by physicians, nurses, and other staff involved in a particular procedure. Its design is meant to minimize delays in processes and manage the quality with regards to standardizations of care processes. It is also used to minimize the variance from procedure to procedure and improve the outcomes of surgeries. Specific features that it provides is the ability to manage costs, create more efficient processes, improve communication between departments and staff, provides a eliable service for patients, and creates on average a quicker cycle time. With the many features and improvements it does create, there are a few things that it does not do. It does not always apply to all procedures and all patients. Some patients require more attention than others which may make them fall off the path. Also, there are no guarantees that the care path will be successful. This needs to be tested and have the flexibility to adapt to changes as needed. 3. Some common causes of extended stay for CABG patients at Mass General Hospital nclude lack of staff in the intensive care unit, the number of medical tests needed on patients that day before the surgery, and limited availability of beds at the recovery level in Ellison 8. Other causes are method of payment, level of complications from the procedure, amount of therapy needed, and social issues such as a patient not having someone to help them once they leave the hospital. A lack of weekend admissions to rehab facilities may also lead to increased hospital stays. 4. The first step the team took to develop the care path, and maybe the most critical, as to create a cross functional team. They assembled a diverse team from multiple departments including a cardiologist, a surgeon, and anesthesiologist, various residents, staff members from the intensive care and recovery unit, and other members ot the hospital statt While not all members ot the team nad as big a role, it was important to obtain information and feedback from all as they did not want to alienate any single department. It was also essential to include numerous departments because the success of this process required complete cooperation and understanding from everyone involved. Once a team has been formed, they would display a flow diagram of the current CABG surgery process and generate a list of problem areas where improvement was needed. They would also examine records of past patients to see why they had stayed in the hospital for the amount of time they had and look for ways to decrease it in future patients. The next step was to host weekly meetings designed to educate all team members and discuss the need for improvement in CABG surgeries. From these discussions team members would be free to express their ideas and issues they may have with the development. After all members were educated on the direction the hospital wanted the care path to go in, they would form several sub groups to discuss progress until all agree on one plan. The most important aspect to the team was that they all participated and were involved in its creation. It was not a sole decision by one member, it was collective. 5. A hazard of standardizing the process too rigorously is that they run the risk of affecting the whole process of the hospital. The current process, even though it may be more expensive, works and provides a good service and product. There are no uarantees that the care path will provide a better service or even match the current one so to change the process you run the risk of harming an already successful product. In addition to the possibility of harming the hospital, they also run the risk of harming the employees due to strictness of the standardization process. This strictness could affect the moral of employees who feel like their opinion or ideas to do matter. Since everything is done by the book and to a constant standard, this leaves no room for innovation from employees. They may feel like they are not as mportant as they once were. Another hazard of a rigorous standardization process is that it could lead to a misdiagnosis of ailments. Since physicians are held to a strict schedule, they may not have time to run all the tests they need, or wanted to, which are needed to identify all complications of patients. If this happens, patients lose confidence in the hospital and over time the reputation may decline. 6. There are some risks or negative effects of allowing too much freedom to customize the operating process as overall costs of the hospital may actually ncrease. This may because they have too much freedom to upgrade facilities, equipment, and services that go beyond the initial scope of the care path. Too much treedom may also lead to a decrease in communications and collaboration between different departments. Since the hospital would not force physicians to use a care path, the ones who did believed it was a better way to treat patients. If they were given too much freedom to customize the process, it may alienate the others who do not use them and create tension between departments. They slowly break way from the hospitals core values of working together for a common purpose and begin to implement their own values. 7. For a patient to experience the optimal care provided by the hospital, they would need to go through all steps of the care path to achieve this. The care path is designed somewhat like a line process where when a patient is cleared by one station they move on to the next. If they were to skip a step, they would not receive full attention and may not get the quality of care they want. Similar to line processes of manufactured goods, if a product were to miss a stage, the final product would not atch the quality of design in which it intended to be. It would lack the quality of conformance as it would not follow design specifications. Patients who do not follow the care path may not receive proper care and may have a bad experience. Not following the path may lead to increased recovery times, increased costs, and delays at each stage of the care path. Not following the designed path would create backups before stages which would not only affect that patients experience, but potentially the experience of other patients as well.