NHS Lanarkshire Improved Operations
In the face of tightening capital budgets, medical centers everywhere are looking for ways to improve safety, efficiency and cost-effectiveness.
GE Healthcare’s Performance Solutions team has partnered with more than 1,500 healthcare organizations—such as the NHS Lanarkshire hospital system in Scotland—to leverage process improvement methodologies for improved operations in key areas.
The Performance Solutions team has engaged with NHS Lanarkshire, applying Lean and Six Sigma process improvement techniques to help increase efficiency, streamline operations and ultimately deliver a better quality of care to more patients.
Through an analysis of NHS Lanarkshire’s performance data and stakeholder interviews, Performance Solutions learned that improvement was needed most within the Acute Emergency Care and Mental Health departments.
After a year, the Performance Solutions team facilitated improvements throughout the hospital system, including:
• Within the Mental Health Group, an increase of 350 percent in therapeutic group activity and an increase of 280 percent in group attendance.
• Within the Acute Care Department, a significant reduction in emergency admissions of elderly people, due to a novel deployment of specialist nurses in the Accident and Emergency department, enabling the service to mothball beds at significant cost saving while still improving the quality of care to patients.
