From the November 2014 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
• Communication – a process that gets people excited about the prospects for change
• Data – solid information to evaluate and analyze your risk

Value-based care initiatives must also be driven by a determination to get results and that means avoiding the “analysis paralysis” that often becomes a roadblock. We must not be drawn into the quicksand of data and fail to execute.


Innovation is key. Michael Schrage at MIT’s Sloan School of Management noted: “The cost of experimentation is now the same or less than the cost of analysis. You can get more value for time, more value for dollar and more value for Euro by doing a quick experiment than doing a sophisticated analysis. In fact your quick experiments can make your sophisticated analysis better.”

Most of us are working in large, complex environments in which it can be difficult to determine how to deal with specific problems. Trying to get your arms around what can be a big problem is well-served by the Lean process. This is the path to value-based care. Lean is about purposes, processes and people. You begin by identifying the value you’re seeking, mapping the value stream, creating flow, establishing a pull and seeking perfection.

We can begin to design once we understand the value stream and the problem. This is where we can move ahead and try something based upon our understanding of what Lean is telling us about the system and what we’re trying to fix. Here, we do preliminary explorations and design a process to address that waste in the value stream. At that point we move to standardize services.

A lean approach to value-based care Employing what we already know, coupled with effective use of Lean processes, we can achieve incremental, but substantial progress within our organizations.

IT Matters
Lean processes worked well as we moved toward value-based care at Spectrum Health. We began by looking at how we could improve quality and safety in the event of system failure. When a radiological system doesn’t work, the staff using it often finds themselves at a loss. They don’t have the proper guidance to continue providing care services during the failure. They often don’t have resources available to provide immediate response.

We asked: how can we put a process in place to ensure they have the right guidance when it is needed? How do we supplant that loss of technology? We used Lean processes to analyze the problem. We decided that the solution must be effective and affordable, but must not be reliant on technology. After all, a system failure represented a failure of technology.

November 2014 Magazine

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