Lean Thinking for Long-Term Care
An Integrated Approach for Driving New Levels of Quality and Cost Savings
James E. Shearon, RN, BSN, MHSA
Vocollect Healthcare Systems
ABSTRACT
The long-term care industry wastes billions on unnecessary paperwork, searching for people, time in meetings, data entry, preparing for audits, and more. “Lean Thinking” is a disciplined approach that has removed billions in cost from a wide variety of industries, from consumer services to healthcare. Leading long-term care organizations are taking notice.
The bottom line: if you’re relying on paper or data entry-intensive technologies like kiosks or PDAs for delivery of care, your operating costs and reimbursement effectiveness are most likely double digits away from where you could be.
Pull large dollars out of your operations. Forward thinking long-term care organizations are Leaning-up processes and applying voice-assisted care technologies that have been successfully applied in the supply chain industry to pull significant dollars out of their operating costs. Leaders see:
- Increased reimbursements. Church of God increased reimbursement effectiveness and saw Case Mix Index (CMI) go from 1.27 to 1.34 in just seven months.
- Reduced nurse overtime. Kendal at Longwood reduced nurse overtime by more than 50%.
- Elimination of paperwork. Falcon’s Landing eliminated almost all caregiver paperwork and saved the organization $150,000 annually.
Each of these organizations was using paper to chart ADLs and burning a lot of cash as a result. They all took a Lean approach to long-term care, overhauled processes, implemented voice-assisted care, and have since reaped significant benefits.
Ready to pull dollars out of your operations? This paper describes how you can take a Lean approach to process improvement and reduce dollars wasted on unnecessary paperwork, steps, searching and more...with voice-assisted care. Your teams will work smarter, faster, and with more focus on resident needs.
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