Accelerated Lean Skills Programme

Amnis (www.amnis.uk.com), in partnership with Training Bulletin, will be running one of their popular Accelerated Lean Skills Programme’s from the 13th-15th April 2010. Details of the programme can be found from this link: http://www.trainingbulletin.co.uk/course_details.php?course_id=292.

Alternatively, if you are interested in running a programme on-site, download our training brochure for the Accelerated Lean Skills Programme from here; (http://www.downloads.amnis.uk.com/ALSP.pdf) or ring +44(0) 870 446 1002 or email Ruth Bodman (ruthbodman@amnis.uk.com).

Now Is The Time To Accelerate In Community Services

Community Services are less prepared for any reduction in funding that many other healthcare organisations. There are also many opportunities to innovate and improve the efficiency within the services. The transformation that has gone on with primary care over the last few years, from mergers to the seperation of commissioning and provider arms has created many new challenges for community service organisations and meant that their investment in building robust and efficient processses has slowed in many areas.

The time is now for community service organisations to transform the way they deliver services if they are to be ready for the expected  funding squeeze. Some of the success will come from the creation of an effective improvement strategy that focuses on the identification of needs and opportunities for efficiency gains, but this will have to be coupled with the effective implementation of change, and all of this done is around the same time (or less) than organisations have taken to create their new organisations.

Are they up for the challenge? Time will tell who was and who wasn’t ready…………and those who start working on it now will be in the front of the pack.

To find out how we can help contact us on 0870-446-1002 or email info@amnis.uk.com.

Visit our website: www.amnis.uk.com

Healthcare organisations urged: “‘Don’t give up on ‘Lean'”

Healthcare organisations – including hospitals – are giving up too soon on ‘Lean’ based improvement initiatives, according to specialist healthcare quality, innovation and productivity improvement enabler, Amnis.

Amnis’ Mark Eaton, explained: “A number of improvement initiatives underway in the healthcare sector are based on the concepts of ‘Lean’ and ‘Lean Sigma’ but, like many organisations in manufacturing where Lean has its origins, there is already evidence that some healthcare organisations are giving up on these initiatives before they realise real results or are simply changing processes and doing nothing to change the underlying culture and behaviours.”

According to Eaton – author of the book ‘Lean for practitioners’ – the top five reasons why this happens are:

1. Lean is not a Board issue but, instead, is launched at divisional or even individual department level. This leads rapidly to fragmentation of activity and dissipation of effort.

2. Not ensuring that the productivity improvements expected through Lean are aligned with the organisation’s objectives. This leads to Lean being ‘out prioritised’ by other activities and put on hold and, once it is on hold, it is one step from being mothballed.

3. Not building on previous experience. This is where Lean tries to undo all of the good things that have gone on – and are currently going on – and this builds resentment from frontline teams.

4. Building reliance on external consultancies or agencies. Building internal capability and, even more importantly, involving a healthcare organisation’s frontline teams, is the only way to get Lean out of the textbook and into the clinic.

5. Many organisations simply give up when they encounter problems, resistance or changing priorities because they have not built up the resilience that is needed to get through the initial period of turbulence.

“Starting out by treating Lean as a Board level issue, approaching it in a flexible manner and recognising the difference between changing processes and changing behaviours are the keys to long-term success,” said Eaton.

To help organisations to understand how Lean helps drive improvements in quality, innovation and productivity, Amnis runs a number of workshops for executives and front-line teams – including its Accelerated Lean Skills Programme.

 In partnership with the Institute of Operations Management, Amnis is running an ‘open’ version of this programme from 8th to 10th September 2009. For more information, contact Amnis at info@amnis.uk.com or call 0870 446 1002.

About ‘Lean’ and ‘Lean Sigma’

Six Sigma is a business management strategy, initially implemented by Motorola, which enjoys widespread application in many sectors of industry. Six Sigma seeks to improve the quality of process outputs by identifying and removing the causes of defects (errors) and variation in manufacturing and business processes. It uses a set of quality management methods, including statistical methods, and creates a special infrastructure of people within the organisation who are experts in these methods. Each Six Sigma project carried out within an organisation follows a defined sequence of steps and has quantified financial targets (cost reduction or profit increase).

Lean Sigma incorporates the speed and impact of ‘lean’ with the quality and variation control of Six Sigma.

Coined by Jim Womack’s research team at MIT in the 1990s, ‘Lean’ means doing more with less. The core idea behind ‘Lean’ is to maximise customer value while minimising waste. A Lean organisation understands customer value and focuses its key processes to continually meet those needs.

About Amnis

Working with both public and private sector organisations, Amnis is a consultancy which specialises in quality, innovation and productivity improvement, helping clients plan and deploy strategies for successful transformation. Its goal is to help clients not only deliver sustainable change but also to develop their capability to tackle their next challenges.

Providing both consultancy and training services, Amnis’ team are leaders in Lean/Six Sigma, organisational development, strategic planning, change management and systems thinking.

Further information from: Bob Little, Bob Little Press & PR, 00 44 (0)1727 860405; bob.little@boblittlepr.com

Amnis helps reveal the secrets of how to improve clinical design

According to the specialist healthcare quality, innovation and productivity improvement enabler, Amnis, redesigning end to end clinical pathways is the basis of improved healthcare performance. Amnis’ Mark Eaton, commented: “However, the days of doing high level pathway redesign and value stream mapping using brown paper and sticky post-it notes alone should now be at an end.

 
“For some time, service improvement professionals have found themselves tasked with spending hours using Visio or PowerPoint to create passable facsimiles of the diagrams appearing on brown paper – so that they can be sent out for comment and updating after the event. These experiences have helped them appreciate the limitations of the ‘brown paper approach’ in this important work.”
 
Amnis and their partners at Process Master, designers of the award winning Leanpad for Healthcare software, which enables users to create, edit, attach documents, communicate, report on and add performance data, are to run a high level Masterclass, in London, on 21st July to set out a viable, cost effective alternative.
 
“The Masterclass will introduce service redesign specialists and others tasked with managing the redesign of clinical pathways to the key things they can do to drive better service redesign activities,” said Amnis’ client services’ director, Ruth Bodman. “It will also allow people to play with, and understand the flexibility and capabilities of Leanpad for Healthcare software.
 
“The event will allow delegates to review the most productive ways to improve the quality and effectiveness of their clinical pathways; gain answers to their problems with Value Stream Mapping and Pathway Redesign Activities from the ‘experts’ and fellow delegates; gain practical experience of using pathway and process software that should reduce the time taken to capture, edit and share information by up to 80 per cent, and find out what other organisations are doing to ensure that their improvement activities are a success,” she said.
 
The Masterclass takes place at IMECHE, in Birdcage Walk, London, SW1. For further details, or to book a free place, contact Amnis’ Ruth Bodman at ruthbodman@amnis.uk.com or call 0870 446 1002.
 
End
 
 
About Amnis Limited
 
Working with both public and private sector organisations, Amnis is a consultancy which specialises in quality, innovation and productivity improvement, helping clients plan and deploy strategies for successful transformation. Its goal is to help clients not only deliver sustainable change but also to develop their capability to tackle their next challenges.
 
Providing both consultancy and training services, Amnis’ team includes specialists in Lean/Six Sigma, organisational development, strategic planning, change management and systems thinking.
 
Further information from:
 
Mark Eaton, Amnis, 00 44 (0) 870 446 1002; markeaton@amnis.uk.com 
Bob Little, Bob Little Press & PR, 00 44 (0)1727 860405; bob.little@boblittlepr.com

Improving Delayed Transfers of Care

Delayed transfers of care are bad for patients and healthcare organisations. Delayed transfers of care arise because of problems with processes, planning, relationships or communications. Fixing these four issues is essential to improving the overall patient experience, and that of their relatives and carers, as well as to reducing costs for the organisations involved.

Recently we have been doing more and more on helping organisations to more effectively transfer care. In one area in the midlands we reduced the average number of patients experiencing delayed transfers of care from 45 per day to 13 through improving the processes between the organisations, gaining agreement on the measures for all the organisations, building bridges between the teams and putting in place early warning systems on patients who are liable to experience a delayed transfer of care.

To find out more about how we achieved this contact Davinder Virdi at davindervirdi(a)amnis.uk.com.

Efficiency & Effectiveness in Healthcare

Efficiency is about things right – for example, ensuring patients are admitted and discharged effectively and for minimum cost.

Effectiveness is about doing the right things – for example, ensuring that only those patients who need to be admitted are and that discharge processes are carried out safely.

They are not the same thing and the drive for efficiencies in terms of cost reduction can lead to a drop in overall effectiveness.

The real focus needs to be on improved effectiveness and then focusing on efficiency in what can be called an ‘Effectiveness First’ programme that combines some strategic work to decide on which services are needed and how they can best be delivered followed by some tactical work to make them cost efficient.

To find out more about how we are helping organisations to be effective and to become efficent in the process contact us today on 0870-446-1002, email info(a)amnis.uk.com or visit our dedicated healthcare consulting website at http://www.amnis.uk.com/healthcare-consulting.

Creating Positive News Stories

Almost everyday the papers carry a different story about problems in the NHS. From medication risk to poor nutrition to simple neglect it seems as if ever penny spent on the NHS is wasted.

However, the reality is so far from this ‘truth’ as to be almost unrecognisable. Hundreds of thousands of exceptional people deliver exceptional care every day of the week and whilst there are problems as a percentage of all activity they are very small.

Whilst even one error, mistake or omission is bad, demoralised staff make more mistakes and there is a need to balance the bad news stories with the good, and even to use the bad stories to drive continuous improvement rather than generate defensive behaviours.

Don’t your team and patients deserve that?

To find out more contact Mark Eaton on 07841-464916 or email markeaton(a)amnis.uk.com.

Slogging away at infection and medication risk

With the Department of Health suggesting trusts need to keep slogging away at infection risk and the on-going fight against medication risk the issues never seem to go away.

There is an old adage that if you always do what you have done you will always get what you have always had and that if you change nothing, then nothing changes.

The key to improving infection and medication risk is to combine the current activities being undertaken to combat both issues and also to maintain the process of continuous improvement that occurs whenever incidents arise. However, this can be combined with a new way of thinking about infection and medication risk that combines Lean with Patient Safety to fundamentally change the way your organisation works and the way it manages risk.

Amnis are leading such changes in a number of trusts and to find out more contact us via info(a)amnis.uk.com or visit our dedicated healthcare consulting website at http://www.amnis.uk.com/healthcare-consulting.

Protecting Protected Mealtimes

With a report this week on malnutrition on the wards in the Health Service Journal it reminds us that protected mealtimes are not as protected as they should be and that other efforts to maintain the health of patients are hampered by difficulties in accessing the right equipment (which could be as simple as having working scales to weigh patients).

Programmes such as the NHS Institute’s RTTC (Releasing Time To Care) (aka Productive Ward) provide a starter for organisations to enable them to release nursing time back to giving care but this needs to be underpinned by robust management processes and good standard work for nurses and nursing so that the cultural change that underpins the change in practices can become a change in behaviour.

The net benefit of changing not only processes but behaviours will be in diverse areas but as a first point of call patients who are hungry for support will get the care they need.

To find out more about how we are helping healthcare organisations to change behaviours and practices contact us today on 0870-446-1002 or email info(a)amnis.uk.com.

Nicholson’s Efficiencies

With the CMO David Nicholson’s statement ‘all bets are off’ this week as the signal of major changes in the NHS, driven by the changing budgets the key focus will be on creating a culture that looks to deliver more and better care with less and fewer resources.

Delivering more and better with less and fewer are not mutually exclusive activities and indeed we can prove that patient care and experience and clinical outcomes improve significantly when the processes and systems are properly designed.

The real issue will be managing the change in culture that is required to enable this approach to work. At the moment, people feel rushed and stressed because of the poor organisational processes and it is this pressure that drives the recurring statement of ‘we need more staff’.

Engaging teams, creating purpose and then enabling individuals the freedom to be innovative are going to be key things for leaders in the NHS to do in the next few years and to find out more about how we can help contact Ruth Bodman on 0870-446-1002 or email ruthbodman(a)amnis.uk.com.

You can also find out more by visiting our dedicated healthcare consulting website at http://www.amnis.uk.com/healthcare-consulting.