A New Approach to Kaizen Events in Healthcare Delivery Systems: Kaizen Sessions

摘要

The use of traditional "Kaizen Events", structured as three to five consecutive day events, has been widely accepted in continuous improvement projects in many industry sectors, including healthcare, due to its focus on rapid solutions and implementations. However, the formation and time dedication of the cross functional team for the traditional "Kaizen Event" challenge organizational and operational management in terms of interruptions on day to day operations, and temporary changes in staffing schedules. Due to these constraints, it sometimes also results to lack of dedicated frontline staff in the Kaizen Event. In this research, a modified Kaizen approach that utilizes a series of two to four hour Kaizen Sessions is proposed to overcome the aforementioned managerial problems. In a case study of process improvement Kaizen in a community hospital, a parameter diagram was used to identify each Kaizen session's input-output relations in the planning phase. Kaizen sessions' successes were measured by surveying Kaizen team during the implementation phase. The overall Kaizen Session's effect was assessed by a variety of process metrics. Finally, the structure, process, and outcome of the traditional Kaizen Event and the new Kaizen Session approach were compared.