At Florida Hospital, Celebration Health, 5S Lean isn’t necessarily defined as a massive undertaking. Instead, staff of the Orlando-area hospital recognize big problems and find small ways to fix them. Here’s one of their stories.
Margaret Bartlett is a laboratory operations director at Celebration Health. Her department received concerns from the labor and delivery unit regarding laboratory specimen turnaround time. She recognized the need for a change and began an investigation.
“After researching the problem, it was discovered that the laboratory staff could not quickly distinguish a labor and delivery specimen from other specimens,” Bartlett said.
It was around that time when Bartlett’s facility began a working partnership with MarketLab. A few of us from MarketLab were visiting Celebration Health and were made aware of the laboratory’s problems so we stepped right in to assist.
“At the recommendation of the MarketLab staff, a blue specimen bag was implemented for labor and delivery sample types only,” Bartlett explained. “The laboratory’s turnaround time has decreased and the number of concerns we have received have fallen.”
For years I’ve been traveling, visiting, and working closely with people in the healthcare industry to provide recommendations in improving their facility’s efficiency and safety to produce consistent outcomes. No matter what facility I go to, no matter the size or prestige of the institution, there are always improvements we can find to make that end up having an impact on the entire facility.
In the case of the laboratory at Celebration Health, improved turnaround times had a positive impact on the departments that send out specimens for testing. MarketLab was able to assist in improving the laboratory by eliminating one simple problem that impacted an entire workflow.
“In the laboratory environment, standardized work flow is essential,” Bartlett said. “MarketLab provides the tools, supplies, and customer service necessary to improve workflow.”
I believe Celebration Health’s success story of simple improvement is key in demonstrating how facility size doesn’t matter when it comes to making a change for the better. What’s important for people to realize is that it’s not always a huge overhaul and it’s not like you’re starting off from scratch. Facilities have processes already in place and often times it’s just a matter of adapting or supporting a change or a correction that helps make existing processes streamline. The result is a much more effective facility.