Solving problems systematically

Five Hills Health Region has hired a black belt to deal with employee concerns and issues.
There are no kicks and no chops, but there is plenty of working with employees to improve the workplace, says black belt Dan Schattenkirk.
His black belt was earned in lean and Six Sigma industrial work flow practices.
Lean practices use principles of continuous improvement developed by the Toyota production system in the 1950s. Six Sigma is a self-review process designed at General Electric. Both systems are widely used in industry.
These systems allow quick and efficient analysis of problems, he said.
"This isn't about top down," says Five Hills CEO Dan Florizone. "This is about the team and the staff, and all of the streams coming together to be trained, get the tools and support to help them make changes to their work environment.
"When you think of the variation in quality we encounter in services, it's really trying to get something of very much value from the patient's perspective."
Schattenkirk says the staff comes up with an idea for change and his improvement and his risk management group becomes involved.
Everybody in the department is involved in interviews. "Teams are very important."
The first step is determining the real problem and the root causes. "That's one of the hardest things. The problem always seems this big but the truth is smaller. It's always somebody else's fault to start with."
Sustainable change that lasts has to involve everyone, he said.
There is no convincing anyone to buy in, he said. "They're coming up with the ideas. They're implementing the ideas, so the buy-in is there.
"In any group you bring together you're going to have differing levels of people wanting to be involved, but you have to bring everybody along."
The approach being used to solve problems is science-based.
"You don't do things willy-nilly. You do it because we have objective data that says this is what should be done."
The process works on a four- to six-month time frame to keep achieving goals.
The laboratory in Gravelbourg Hospital indicates how the lean process works.
Before the process, people needing blood work had to make an appointment two weeks ahead, then wait an average of 17 minutes at the appointed time to have the samples taken.
The lab averaged 18 samples a day, from a peak of 32 to a low of five.
Once the public was consulted and employees worked with Schattenkirk, changes to the work flow "eliminated the two-week wait; people can come when they want and there is no longer the wait when there."
When the Lafleche lab unexpectedly closed recently, Gravelbourg handled the load without a problem, he said.
About 40 of the 57 ideas were used, including some that resulted in overwall walking about during tasks being reduced by 1.8 km. per day.
"If you take 40 ideas and save two minutes on each, you've saved 80 minutes the staff can use to do other work," Schattenkirk said.
The process is not about reducing or adding staff, says Florizone.
"It's about improving quality care for the patient."
Once a team does these practices, he said, the improvement process becomes perpetual, he said.

Fifteen projects under lean and Six Sigma program
About 15 projects are in various stages of the lean and Six Sigma program in the Five Hills Health Region.
Some of the successes include reducing wait times for mental health appointments to one week from three months, reducing 30-minute lab waits to an average 17 minutes, saving two hours of emergency nurse time by rerouting calls, and saving two hours a week on inventory of operating room supplies.
The maintenance department re-organized the work place and responds much sooner to work orders and is handling larger flows of work.