Although the LSS approach to improve health care processes has been around for some time now and many health care institutions of various sizes have utilized it to improve clinical and administrative processes, LSS practitioners have noted that a majority of these LSS projects have not been sustained and that many fail to meet intended targets (98). A survey of key informants of this study has highlighted six common themes as to the barriers that have prevented LSS projects from sustaining gains. These themes were further categorized into two main topics: lack of leadership commitment to drive a culture of quality and inadequately trained and unqualified LSS practitioners to execute LSS projects in health care. Table 11 below summarizes the
…show more content…
Such lack of leadership is inevitably causing the organization to lose tight linkages between LSS project goals and overall strategy of the health care institution. This, in turn, leads LSS projects to lose engagement from key stakeholders that are essential for project success, especially when the project is attempting to implement cross functional solutions with many process owners and sustain the gains. In addition, lack of leadership support may make LSS be perceived by the organization as just a tool to fix their “issue of the day,” an attitude that can never get the most out of LSS which is supposed to spread well controlled and streamlined processes throughout the organization in a sustainable manner. A negative side effect of this perception that LSS is a tool to fix “issues of the day” is that when the issue goes away, the LSS project team is tasked to open another project to address another hot issue and never really is able to establish and execute a long term control plan and sustain the project results. A LSS project with a shared purpose and one that is linked to a business strategy can better garner support from a diverse stakeholder group. In addition, many projects require significant resources and capital investments that can only be provided with strong leadership …show more content…
What is different in the health care environment from other commercial industries applying LSS is that projects conducted in hospitals put more emphasis on improving the individual experience of care, improving the health of populations, though reducing cost is also an important purpose of LSS. Corporations have a different approach; they aim their LSS efforts more on improving market leadership and profitability based on reducing defects and costs, through improving the quality of their products and services (103) (104). This difference in priority of the purposes of LSS is important to address carefully. Corporations are driven by profits and thus can manage their LSS projects that are directly tied to the company’s fiscal performance and can reward LSS programs accordingly. It is more difficult to tie benefits derived from health care LSS projects to direct performance metrics such as dollars saved or increased profitability. In most cases, health care organizations adopt LSS simply as a problem solving
Such lack of leadership is inevitably causing the organization to lose tight linkages between LSS project goals and overall strategy of the health care institution. This, in turn, leads LSS projects to lose engagement from key stakeholders that are essential for project success, especially when the project is attempting to implement cross functional solutions with many process owners and sustain the gains. In addition, lack of leadership support may make LSS be perceived by the organization as just a tool to fix their “issue of the day,” an attitude that can never get the most out of LSS which is supposed to spread well controlled and streamlined processes throughout the organization in a sustainable manner. A negative side effect of this perception that LSS is a tool to fix “issues of the day” is that when the issue goes away, the LSS project team is tasked to open another project to address another hot issue and never really is able to establish and execute a long term control plan and sustain the project results. A LSS project with a shared purpose and one that is linked to a business strategy can better garner support from a diverse stakeholder group. In addition, many projects require significant resources and capital investments that can only be provided with strong leadership …show more content…
What is different in the health care environment from other commercial industries applying LSS is that projects conducted in hospitals put more emphasis on improving the individual experience of care, improving the health of populations, though reducing cost is also an important purpose of LSS. Corporations have a different approach; they aim their LSS efforts more on improving market leadership and profitability based on reducing defects and costs, through improving the quality of their products and services (103) (104). This difference in priority of the purposes of LSS is important to address carefully. Corporations are driven by profits and thus can manage their LSS projects that are directly tied to the company’s fiscal performance and can reward LSS programs accordingly. It is more difficult to tie benefits derived from health care LSS projects to direct performance metrics such as dollars saved or increased profitability. In most cases, health care organizations adopt LSS simply as a problem solving