Using Lean Six Sigma to Transform Hospital System Primary Care Practices into a Patient-Centered Medical Home

摘要

The Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) has rapidly grown favor as an accepted approach to controlling healthcare costs, and delivering better quality of care to patients. This transformation of care delivery largely focuses on elevating the role of the Primary Care Physician (PCP) in the management and coordination of their patients treatment both within the practice and in collaboration with specialists, hospital systems, and other medical facilities such as Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Facilities. However, the transition to a PCMH can be difficult to accomplish as it requires many changes to the workflow of the practice, the collection of evidence for accreditation, and possibly the addition of staff. This problem is immensely more difficult for hospital systems which may have dozens of practices to transition. The proper project management enables an effective transition without the disruption of the running of the practices. By incorporating Lean and Lean Six Sigma principles into the PCMH transition for a hospital system with 33 PCP practices, we were able to effectively redesign workflows, monitor progress, adapt practice design to requirements, establish pull, reduce overproduction, work with many practices simultaneously, and accomplish this entire transition with minimal staff assigned to this project.