When you implement even just a few key continuous improvement ideas, you can spark the cultural change necessary to get real and lasting improvement in the workplace.  Need some inspiration and ideas how to get there?

Here are 4 tips for continuous improvement with your practice. 

 

Go to the Gemba

Gemba is a Japanese word that means “real place”.  This is where the front line of your practice is doing the real work.  Instead of guessing or worse, assuming, that you know what the problem is or how to make a process better—go to the gemba.  Physically walk there, observe and ask questions, but do so without judgement.  Highly successful leaders will literally get down in the trenches and away from their desks.   Remember these three words:  see, ask and act.  SEE how it’s really getting done now, ASK how it can be done better and later and after reflection and thoroughly eliminating all assumptions, ACT on what you learn.

Root Cause Analysis (RCA)

What is the core of the process problem?  Do your best to not be distracted by the signs and symptoms.  Keep digging for the real cause—the root of the issue.

Embrace Kaizen

One of HybridChart’s core values is to “Embrace Kaizen”.  The word Kaizen is translated from Japanese in a number of ways, most simply as “change for the better.”  To always live and strive for continuous process improvement and embrace Kaizen will help to improve practice profitability and improve time management.

 

HybridChart—Creating a Culture of Continuous Improvement

If healthcare providers in today’s tough economy and brutal insurance market think they can succeed, or even compete, without eliminating the paper and time that their current hospital charge and census management wastes – they are going to fail.  HybridChart is driven by the hard-core belief that every process can be improved and that every user has the power to improve each process.  That spirit guides us daily in developing the most agile charge capture tool available today.  This tool, integrated with a practice’s EHR, puts census management, discharge planning, quality metrics and secure messaging – all in the palm of the hand of the provider at the point of care.

Learn how to streamline your practice and reclaim what’s most important to you: your time.  Download Your Complete Guide to a Streamlined Practice and a Happy Team now!

 

Dr. Gregory Sanders is a Harvard-trained, practicing cardiologist and founder and CEO of HybridChart. He has been coding since the 1980s and has spent his medical career focusing on improving processes. His patient care skills earned him recognition as one of Phoenix Magazine’s TOP DOCs. He lives in Scottsdale with his family.