Company profile:

• One of Southern California’s foremost medical groups dedicated to the well being of its patients and the communities it serves
• Approximately 2,500 employees and clinicians spread across 40 business locations throughout the region

Business challenge:

• Inpatient services group needed to enhance overall effectiveness of inpatient care services
• Company wanted to implement organizational, technological and process related changes to gain greater efficiencies

Process improvement and change management solutions provided include:

• Planned and facilitated intensive work process improvement team meetings to evaluate current state performance and identify improvement opportunities
• Led shared visioning and creativity building exercises to align team goals with project objectives, develop alternative solution sets and test future state designs
• Performed individual job and organizational impact assessments with team to determine potential barriers and areas of resistance for To Be solutions
• Conducted stakeholder analysis and created communications plan to increase buy-in via sponsor presentations and stakeholder information sessions
• Administered customized team effectiveness survey and coordinated team building activities via regular team check-ins
• Facilitated operational design and implementation of new Inpatient Central department to integrate administrative functions
• Managed all training activities for implementation effort, including development of training materials and functional job aides

Key business results:

• Greater patient satisfaction from establishing more effective communication channels with patients
• Reduced hospital readmissions and overall operating costs by improving communications with other providers
• Effectively designed and executed key policies and procedures to streamline best practices across company
• Enabled successful rollout of new Inpatient Central department, including associated procedures and information technologies

Plus Delta has been with us right from the start – keeping the team organized and on track throughout the process. Their whole team has been invaluable in making this change a tremendous success.

- Director, Inpatient Services

Are all of the initiatives or projects undertaken by your company well-run, streamlined, and efficient? Is productivity high, employee morale healthy, and communication clear and effective? These common performance issues are leading indicators of the need for process improvement in every organization.

According to CIO Insight magazine, “Given the pressures that exist for executives, managers and workers….streamlining business processes and squeezing out greater efficiency has moved front stage center.” (April, 2004)

One way to energize your staff and improve business performance is to encourage employees to innovate – to discover new and better ways of doing their jobs. Plus Delta’s process improvement methodology helps create an environment for such innovative thinking. The results for Plus Delta’s clients are consistent – more efficient and productive organizations. By increasing alignment amongst all parties in the process, we get the entire team’s energy focused on achieving the core business objectives. In order to eliminate waste and reduce overall operating costs, you might consider assessing your organization’s performance based on these indicators. Then you can redesign your primary operating procedures to maximize performance.

Plus Delta’s process improvement approach begins with a review of your current workflow and an analysis of your existing organizational structures. Our detailed improvement plan typically consists of the following activities:

• Definition – Verify your “as is” processes and your existing workflow. This will set a ‘benchmark’ for measuring your core operating procedures
• Standardization – Design a predictable model for your “to be” processes. Areas addressed include removing bottlenecks, eliminating redundancies, and reducing manual handoffs
• Automation – Incorporate new templates and advanced technologies to streamline paper-based operations and integrate other business functions
• Transition – Implement your “to be” processes concurrent with realigning job functions and reporting structures to better match the new process requirements
• Evaluation – Assess the effectiveness of your new procedures, consider potential enhancements, and refine the process in order to achieve increased efficiencies well into the future

The success of any organization’s innovation effort hinges on senior leadership’s ability to define a clear vision, create a sense of urgency to change, assign the right people to the effort, and establish “quick wins” to demonstrate success in the early stages of the innovation effort. Such an effort begins with the company’s business strategy informing its process objectives. So evaluating critical suppliers, inputs, customers, and outputs helps drive the process as well as eliminate any process waste.

The reality, though, is that it doesn’t end with creating a new process. Implementing the new process is just as important as fashioning it. To facilitate the transition from the “old” to the “new” processes, all affected employees need to be educated about any requirements, key stakeholder groups need to be made aware of all changes, and clear performance standards must be established. Re-skilling employees is also critical to the sustainability of your process innovations, so be sure to make a comprehensive training strategy an essential component of any implementation plan. Finally, performance expectations should be designed – and agreed to – to enable ongoing evaluation, monitoring, and continuous improvement to occur.

The guiding purpose of process innovation is to reinforce the organization’s vision and its strategic direction by identifying opportunities for performance improvement. It is important to encourage creativity and fresh ideas in order for the most innovative ideas and solutions to surface. This is an opportunity to refresh old habits, question established practices, and truly capture the most efficient new processes. Through enhanced workflow designs and strategic leadership of critical imperatives, people will re-think the way they do their jobs and radically enhance the way you do business.

Can Plus Delta help you innovate your current business processes? To learn how to streamline your business operations FOR GOOD, please call Dr. Jeremy Lurey directly at +1 (310) 589-4600 or send him an email at jslurey@plusdelta.net