Healthcare is akin to product manufacturing in the sense that each action is a culmination of an overall process. As a product moves down the production line from one “station” to another, a patient’s experience in modern healthcare facilities develops much in the same manner. An outpatient would arrive for medical testing, register with their doctor’s order, and then be taken to the medical testing area where preparation work and testing are performed. After that, the patient is returned to the starting point of registration for the process to start again with another patient. A typical inpatient could arrive in an outpatient services entrance, then be processed by the admissions nursing office onto a floor in the healthcare facility,
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13). A bottleneck determines the pace at which the whole process can work, while the constraint is the bit of the resource that causes the bottleneck (National Health Service, 2008). The technique was developed by Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt, an Israeli physicist who later became a business management guru. Goldratt developed processes that are typically modeled as resource flows, and the constraints typically represent limits on flows (Balderstone & Mabin, n.d.). Goldratt was also the developer of the Optimized Production Technique, the Thinking Processes, Drum-Buffer-Rope, Critical Chain Project Management, and other TOC derived tools (Balderstone & Mabin, …show more content…
Healthcare providers are reimbursed by insurance companies based on an agreed-upon fee, or contracted amount, regardless of the costs associated with the level of care given to the patient. Under these circumstances, healthcare providers must work to keep costs down while finding ways to increase patient volume in order to compensate for the lack of sufficient reimbursement by the payors. For non-profit hospitals, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has developed a grading system for patient satisfaction tied to subsequent reimbursement. CMC has developed a survey to send to patients after treatment, as well as a website to submit the experience into the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems, or HCAHPS. The HCAHPS determines the patient’s perspective on their health provider care and hospital stay. Reimbursement is now directly tied into hospital scores on the HCAHPS surveys. Questions in the surveys are based upon some of the following criteria: (1) nurse or employee communication, (2) physician communication, (3) responsiveness of staff, (4) pain management, (5) communication about medicines, (6) discharge of information, (7) cleanliness of hospital environment, (8) quietness of hospital
13). A bottleneck determines the pace at which the whole process can work, while the constraint is the bit of the resource that causes the bottleneck (National Health Service, 2008). The technique was developed by Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt, an Israeli physicist who later became a business management guru. Goldratt developed processes that are typically modeled as resource flows, and the constraints typically represent limits on flows (Balderstone & Mabin, n.d.). Goldratt was also the developer of the Optimized Production Technique, the Thinking Processes, Drum-Buffer-Rope, Critical Chain Project Management, and other TOC derived tools (Balderstone & Mabin, …show more content…
Healthcare providers are reimbursed by insurance companies based on an agreed-upon fee, or contracted amount, regardless of the costs associated with the level of care given to the patient. Under these circumstances, healthcare providers must work to keep costs down while finding ways to increase patient volume in order to compensate for the lack of sufficient reimbursement by the payors. For non-profit hospitals, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has developed a grading system for patient satisfaction tied to subsequent reimbursement. CMC has developed a survey to send to patients after treatment, as well as a website to submit the experience into the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems, or HCAHPS. The HCAHPS determines the patient’s perspective on their health provider care and hospital stay. Reimbursement is now directly tied into hospital scores on the HCAHPS surveys. Questions in the surveys are based upon some of the following criteria: (1) nurse or employee communication, (2) physician communication, (3) responsiveness of staff, (4) pain management, (5) communication about medicines, (6) discharge of information, (7) cleanliness of hospital environment, (8) quietness of hospital