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Massachusetts General Hospital: CABG Surgery (A) case study Essay

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Problem:
The cost of the health care industry has always been rising since the early 1980s. It has been a growing concern in both the industry and society. Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) is no exception. Even though the average length of stay (LOS) for the patients in MGH has been declining (Exhibit 10), it is still the highest compared to their competitors (Exhibit 6). Besides the cost, there is no uniformity of process and standardization across different facilities and departments of the hospital. MGH lacks communication and coordination between the facilities.

Key Issues:
Dr. David Torchiana (Cardiac Surgeon) and Dr. Richard Bohmer (Quality Improvement Administrator) want to improve the process in the hospital by…show more content…
Moreover, MGH cannot pass that cost to patients as 80% of the CABG patients are on DRG which means they cannot increase the price for these 80% of patients.
Managing demand and capacity: MGH could forecast the demand and research the bottlenecks in each area of process flow diagram (Exhibit 8) such as surgery room, Ellison 8 rooms, SICU floor bed, and other hospital beds. Based on the research, they can increase or decrease the resources such as staff or beds or even expand the facility. They need the data to forecast and manage the capacity. Without the data, it is impossible to manage the capacity. So MGH need to start collecting data to better manage the demand and available capacity. However, this would not help solve the current immediate problem in hand to improve the process and reduce costs.
No change: The cost is increasing every year in the health care industry. There is no way to transfer these costs to patients as the services are already costly. Change is the only constant. Change is inevitable for MGH to survive in this industry. There are no pros with this option and several cons such as having no standards, poor communication and coordination between groups and poor maintenance of patient’s track records.

Recommendation:
The best alternative from the above is to adopt the strategy of focusing on the process (1st alternative). This can be achieved by the proposed care path. Most of the operational issues under Key issues
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