Essay Virginia Mason Case Study

Patient safety is number one in hospitals. Every staff member that comes into contact with a patient should always have the question, “Will the patient be safe?” in the back of

This requires critical thinking and reliance on one's one staff and healthcare system. The healthcare system has many safety measures, such as better medication and patient scanning systems, bed or chair alarms to alert staff, and the call-light system to let patient request staff in a timely manner. Though there are measures in place to try and limit errors they still happen. Even if a patient is on a bed alarm the patient could still fall while ambulating. Safety call-outs are a way to track what happen or almost happen and to further prevent such occurrences from happening again. It goes beyond just blaming one single to person

"To continuously improve health care for the public, in collaboration with other stakeholders, by evaluating health care organizations and inspiring them to excel in providing safe and effective care of the highest quality and value” (Jointcommission.org, 2015). These requirements are regimented in the National Patient Safety Goals and are enforced via surveys and internal inspections to ensure that healthcare institutions abide by the safety mechanisms put in place to facilitate the optimal patient outcomes and environments.

Kaplan’s first strategy would be to get a visual of the current process that takes place. Value-stream mapping would give him a better idea of the gaps in VMMC’s work flow. Value-stream mapping would encompass patient check-in, visits, inventory and flow of equipment. Kaplan felt that by starting with the value-stream mapping it would set the base for the implementation of Virginia Mason Production System. By applying the plan of action that TPS used and modifying it to fit VMMC, within the year Kaplan started to see positive results from the various strategies that were exercised.

Keeping patients safe is essential in today’s health care system, but patient safety events that violate that safety are increasing each year. It was only recently, that the focus on patient safety was reinforced by a report prepared by Institute of medicine (IOM) entitled ” To err is human, building a safer health system”(Wakefield & Iliffe,2002).This report found that approx-imately 44,000 to 98,000 deaths occur each year due to medical errors and that the majority was preventable. Deaths due to medical errors exceed deaths due to many other causes such as like HIV infections, breast cancer and even traffic accidents (Wakefield & Iliffe, 2002). After this IOM reports, President Clinton established quality interagency

In 1606 the Virginia Company was created also known as the New Virginia. The food was supposed to come from two places: occasional supply ships and trade with the local Native Americans. There were a couple issues with this one the lag time from back and forth of each location, and the amount of men that they started off with came back less than they started with because of death. John Smith forced on people a strict control on the colonists "Work or starve." Each colonist was needed/demanded to spend hours per day farming. The winter from 1609-10, was known as the "starving time," was the worst time of all. A large amount of the English colonists, who moved in from another country to Virginia, died of starvation as well as sicknesses destroyed

There are many differences between each colony even though some may seem very similar. When looked at Virginia and Maryland may seem similar in many ways, besides the fact Virginia was made into a colony for buying and selling while selling shares. Virginia had many joint-stock companies which were used so colonists could buy invest in different companies by buying shares from the company. Virginia also made most profits off of buying and selling mostly tobacco. The colonists who lived in Virginia relied on tobacco and the profits from it. Until tobacco caused inflation and ruined field. Virginia settlers searched for gold a lot of the time as well while looking for a passage to the Indes.

Quality management is essential to the success of the quality improvement of the health care industry. “Management uses management and planning tools to organize the decision making process and create a hierarchy when faced with competing priorities “( Ransom, et al., 2008). Quality measures should have these goals: effective, safe, efficient, patient-centered, equitable, and timely care (Quality Measures, Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services, 2011).

Patient safety one of the driving forces of healthcare. Patient safety is defined as, “ the absence of preventable harm to a patient during the process of healthcare or as the prevention of errors and adverse events caused by the provision of healthcare rather than the patient’s underlying disease process. (Kangasniemi, Vaismoradi, Jasper, &Turunen, 2013)”. It was just as important in the past as it is day. Our healthcare field continues to strive to make improvement toward safer care for patients across the country.

Driven by the financial losses in 1998 and 1998, competition on “Pill Hill”, and declining staff morale, VMMC established a set of goals to achieve its vision of becoming the industry’s quality leader. And to become the quality leader, VMMC needed to focus on the patient, work in a team environment, and embrace change. Kaplan was the person in charge of implementing change at VMMC to achieve that vision. To do so, he needed a system that focused on quality and the Toyota Production System (TPS) was the perfect fit for this organizational change. Previously, VMMC utilized systems such as Total Quality Management (TQM) and Six Sigma. However, TQM was not generating the result that VMMC was seeking, and Six Sigma allowed a defect rate, which was not acceptable at VMMC since “safety and perfection are paramount,” as administrative director Christina Saint Martin noted. In the healthcare world, Dr. James Bender explains that “no one should die because of something we could prevent (Bohmer & Ferlins, 2008).”

The Johns Hopkins Hospital, located in Baltimore, MD, is one of the greatest institutions in modern medicine. Established in 1889 from the donation of philanthropist Johns Hopkins, the hospital and university serve millions of patients annually for emergency, inpatient, and outpatient visits. Patient care is the focus of Johns Hopkins vision. The hospital uses quality care and innovation to enhance patient care. It is the hospital’s goal to have great precision, safety, comfort, coordination, and improved workflow to achieve an outstanding customer experience. An added feature to the customer experience are the design elements that can be found flowing throughout their newest facilities which helps foster healing and stress free environments. From the dramatic art collections that fill the walls and windows of patients rooms, to its 20-year reign as U.S. News and World Report’s “Best Hospital”, Johns Hopkins has made its mark on society. At some point, however, every great dynasty loses its ranks. Unfortunately, Johns Hopkins is no different. With the creation of a federally-mandated patient satisfaction survey for Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement, the stakes for high ratings is of fiscal importance. In an effort to increase its patient satisfaction ratings, the hospital created performance measurements to highlight strengths and areas of improvement with patient outcomes. The implementation of this new initiative, the Patient Toolbox, considers the fundamental reasons

2012 Joint Commission Patient Safety Goals. (n.d.). Retrieved January 2014, from Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center: www.lovell.fhcc.va.gov/about/2012PatientSafetyGoals.pdf

The purpose of this paper is to identify a quality safety issue. I will summarize the impact that this issue has on health care delivery. In addition, I will identify quality improvement strategies. Finally, I will share a plan to effectively implement this quality improvement strategy.

Issues related to a lack of patient safety have been going on for a lot of years now. Throughout the first decade of the 21st century, there has been a national emphasis on cultivating patient safety. Patient safety is a global issue, that touches countries at all levels of expansion and is one of the nation's most determined health care tests. According to the Institute of Medicine (1999), they have measured that as many as 48,000 to 88,000 people are dying in U.S. hospitals each year as the result of lapses in patient safety. Estimates of the size of the problem on this are scarce particularly in developing countries; it is likely that millions of patients worldwide could suffer disabling injuries or death every year due to unsafe medical care. Risk and safety have always been uninterruptedly been significant concerns in the hospital industry. Patient safety is a very much important part of our health care system and it really

Michael Stefanic, director of cost management at Owens & Minor (O&M), a medical and surgical supplies distributor and Daniel Borunda, material systems manager at Virginia Mason (VM) Medical Center came together to try to battle healthcare costs and improve the healthcare supply chain. Virginia Mason, a private non-profit healthcare organization based out of Seattle, offered both primary and specialized care and developed the Virginia Mason Production System (VMPS). The VMPS was a modified version of the Toyota Production System that helped VM work towards its goal of being a quality leader, emphasized line-level employee teamwork, and fought for a zero defect rate. The components of VMPS included value-stream mapping