Rural Hospital Survival Guide

Rural Hospitals in America

Rural hospitals in America have more challenges than ever.  The $1 million question is how you can cut costs, improve care, retain providers and staff, boost rankings, and meet all requirements without spending any more money, or by spending even less?

The good news is that there truly is an answer, but you might not believe it at first.  The Lean Six Sigma methodology is the most effective performance excellence methodology for large hospitals, by far, but the problem is that it is rarely done right in a rural setting.

The conventional implementation model geared to large hospitals demands a large up-front investment with financial returns coming far into the future.  The focus is on training and everyone is expected to just have faith that it will pay off in the end.  You can’t afford that.

For this exact reason, we have developed a unique Lean Six Sigma implementation model for rural hospitals and clinics that requires minimal up-front investment, delivers rapid financial results, sustainably fixes the biggest/highest return problems first, and uses a pay-for-performance project model that ensures we don’t make money unless you do.  This is not an add-on, extra program that will increase burden on anyone.  Projects are focused on problems you need to fix now anyway and the methodology ensures the results are better than you could have hoped for.  We call that, “Lean that isn’t a Waste!”

By starting small and rolling this out across the hospital successful project by successful project, not only do you solve your most important-highest return problems first, plugging the leaks, and start making more money, but you organically spread Lean thinking throughout the facility based on positive project experiences.  Team members have fun on projects and feel good about making things better for patients and their fellow staff, and they feel it’s an honor to do be named to the “Lean Team.  Those who really take to it can dig in to learn more and have a real chance to advance their career.

Effective projects generate a high degree of interest as employees start noticing things changing for the better, nagging problems vanishing, complaints diminishing, and an “internal pull” is created which means more and more staff members want to become involved on their own volition, as opposed to mandatory training and extra work that is forced on them (“Successful Change Programs Begin with Results“). The beauty of this approach is that the time the team spends on solving problems very quickly eliminates enough mistakes and wasted time to easily overcome the time they spend on the project.

This is not a flavor-of-the-month change program, but a structured way to ingrain a sustainable culture of trust and continuous improvement person-by-person, in a revenue positive manner.  You solve problems, build trust, develop capacity, make more money, and soon you have a core of problem killers who are eager for more.  Everyone learns a structured approach to problem solving and soon lots of little changes add up to a big number.  This is how you begin a transformation from the ground-up!

Our projects require minimal time investment from executives (1 hour from the CEO over 3 months) and team members (6 hours over 3 months) and at the end of a project with us you will have a problem off your plate for good and a trained team ready to apply what they learned to the next project. The team leader(s) can choose to become certified Lean Six Sigma Green Belts after completing the project, writing a final report, and passing a test based upon a book we use.  They will have gained solid experience working on a successful project and be ready to lead another.

We also don’t waste time on weeks of training the team first, rather we teach them just enough to get started and they learn the rest as they work on projects. Team members have fun and feel important to be working on a project and this learning-by-doing approach results in better retention and a team ready to use LSS tools and thinking to solve other problems immediately.  We also don’t waste the team’s time on an endless string of do-nothing meetings.  This is crisp, focused, and the point is to get things done.

Our teams are made up of cross-functional front-line staff, with a manager or two as team leaders, and they will come out of the first project ready and raring to use LSS on other problems.  We work with the team leader directly and the only time commitment from a CEO after project launch is a weekly or bi-weekly meeting with the team leader to gauge progress and address organizational barriers.