Managing and Evaluating Rapid-Cycle Process Improvements as Vehicles for Hospital System Redesign

Final Contract Report

This report describes a construct for transforming a large integrated health care system (Denver Health) that began with a comprehensive planning phase and continued with management and evaluation of one component of this transformation effort—the implementation of Lean. 

Contents

Summary
Background and Purpose of the Project
Multipronged Construct for Health Care System Transformation
Tools for Process Redesign
Creation and Coordination of Operational and Evaluation Structure
Evaluating Impact of Implementing Lean Tools and Creating Structure
Challenges and Lessons Learned
Intersection of the Construct's Process Improvement Component With Other Components
Communication and Knowledge Transfer
Appendixes:
A. External Advisory Steering Committee
B. Pre- and Post-RIE Week Activities
C. Definitions of System-Level Metrics Included in Table 4

This project was supported by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality under Contract No. 290-00-0014.