Lean Principles Have Answers for Healthcare

Photo courtesy of Lean Healthcare e-Academy

Intelligent Guidance Technology Can Help Healthcare Facilities Adopt ‘Lean’ Principles

We usually associate “lean” with manufacturing. That’s because this management philosophy was inspired by the work of W. Edwards Deming at manufacturers in post war Japan and caught the attention of the U.S. by way of Toyota Motor’s manufacturing continuous improvement systems.

However, it’s not surprising that classic lean management principles are starting to permeate healthcare. Eliminating waste, cutting costs, and improving quality (three bedrock lean objectives) will continue to drive healthcare providers in the future no matter what shape healthcare reform takes.

Software with “intelligent guidance” capabilities is a catalyst that will accelerate the adoption and execution of lean principles in healthcare revenue cycle workflows.

Lean Principles Have Answers for Healthcare

Even though healthcare providers have been slow to accept lean principles, higher costs and lower patient tolerance for inefficient systems will speed up their adoption.  According to experts testifying to Congress, of the $2.5 trillion spent on healthcare each year, 30-50% does not add value to patients.

“In general, health care systems are where manufacturing was in the mid-to late 1980s in terms of lean,” said Jerry McCormick of J.D. McCormick & Associates, a consulting firm that deals with lean systems. McCormick went on to say healthcare is lagging behind other industries in applying lean practices because it traditionally has been focused on doctors rather than patients.

Intelligent Guidance – a tool to apply lean practices to Patient Access

These days, however, the patient’s importance is on the rise. As the healthcare industry adjusts to this new importance, they are looking towards lean principles to help meet their goals and reduce costs. Patient access managers within the healthcare field are finding new technologies with intelligent guidance capabilities allow them to accomplish these lean objectives.

Here are a few examples of how technologies with these intelligent guidance capabilities help those in the healthcare industry meet their goals:

• Cut waste and errors

HFMA reports that on average there is a 31% error rate when collecting patient registration information. That means that almost 1/3 of the patient, guarantor, and insurance information gathered during registration is incorrect.

This incorrect information cascades through the revenue cycle causing havoc for billing, claims management, reimbursement and other processes. At each stage of the revenue cycle someone has to identify and fix the errors that occurred during registration.  And even more troubling, some of these errors are overlooked which can cause denied claims and potential bad debt.

By using intelligent guidance during registration, patient access managers can prevent these errors from occurring in the first place. They transfer the knowledge required to enter the correct information from the back office to the registrars where it is needed.

• Eliminate extra steps

One of the sacred principles of “lean” is to touch or do something only once. Lean gurus train their disciples to identify and eliminate extra steps that don’t produce value in a workflow, so touching something multiple times is wasteful.

In the past, patient access management has allowed errors to take place, used software to identify the errors after the fact, reported them back to a registrar or supervisor who fixed the errors, and then retrained the registrar not to make the errors in the future. Lean thinking asks the question “Why not prevent the errors in the first place?” Patient Access managers are beginning to use intelligent guidance to prevent errors from occurring during registration.

• Deliver JIT knowledge

In hospitals, like other institutions, the knowledge required to productively interact with customers at the front end frequently is buried in the back office. The knowledge exists but it’s not always at the right place or in the right form where and when it is needed. The challenge is to deliver the right knowledge to the right person, at the right time, and in the right circumstances. Intelligent guidance enables patient access managers to transform passive, on-the-shelf knowledge into actionable, just-in-time knowledge.

• Develop your employees

Everyone wants to be successful in his or her job. Lean thinking maintains that instead of monitoring and incentivizing behavior it’s better to build the behavior into the system. Let the system drive the desired behavior. This leads to contented, successful employees.

Intelligently guided technologies insert guides, alerts, and scripts into the registration process when and where they are needed. The system prompts the desired behavior while cutting errors and eliminating waste.

These are just some examples of how savvy patient access managers are employing intelligent guidance to introduce lean practices at the front end of the revenue cycle. Their efforts are paying off in improved patient satisfaction, increased quality, lower costs and improved staff morale.

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