St. Joseph Medical Center’s Lean Team Named the Daily Record’s Top Winner,
2009 Maryland Innovator of the Year Award
For Decreasing ER Treatment Time by 25 % Using Lean Methods from the Auto Industry
The Lean Team of St. Joseph Medical Center has been selected as the Top Winner of The Daily Record’s 2009 Innovator of the Year Awards.
The Daily Record began the Innovator of the Year Awards in 2002 as a way to recognize Marylanders and Maryland-based companies for their innovative spirit – for creating new products, new programs, new services, or new processes that have helped their companies, industries, or communities.
The Lean team, composed of St. Joseph physicians, nurses, technicians, systems analysts, registration experts and other staff, applied Lean techniques adapted from the auto industry to produce innovations and eliminate unnecessary steps in emergency treatment.
“Being a major provider of emergency services, including heart and stroke, St. Joseph’s emergency capabilities are vitally important to the health of the community. We are very proud to be chosen as the Top Winner by The Daily Record for our innovation. Our Lean Team has enabled St. Joseph’s ER to continue to provide the highest quality of care – but faster than before,” sums up Durenda Juergensen, R.N., St. Joseph’s assistant vice president of Nursing, who co-led the Lean effort, along with David Norton, an expert in Lean methods.
“Lean creates speed, by improving cycle time, and efficiency, through elimination of waste,” said Norton.
According to Press Ganey Associates, the average wait in a U.S. emergency department (ED) is 3.7 hours. Between 1996 and 2006, 32 percent more Americans sought ED care. This has led to a troubling situation – when an ED reaches capacity, ambulances get diverted away to distant EDs. To try to ease ED crowding, many hospitals have scrambled to open up more beds, but that doesn’t really help, says Juergensen. “Opening up additional expensive capacity isn’t the solution. We need to attack the root cause of the patient backups in the ED – the length of time it takes to treat each patient.”
“We’ve had a 25 percent decrease in length of stay in the ED,” says Dr. Gail Cunningham, chief of St. Joseph’s ED. “The impact has been dramatic. Our ambulance divert times have gone significantly down. Reduction in our yellow diverts is approximately 60 percent and red diverts (critical care situations) is 85 percent.”
“We improved patient flow, eliminated delays, standardized process steps to ensure they are done perfectly, and organized our workplace effectively,” adds Norton. “For example, we improved chest pain patients’ time from arrival to an EKG by 50 percent. Patients get to key treatments and decision points faster.”
This year, The Daily Record received more than 80 nominations for the Innovator of the Year, which are solicited from The Daily Record’s readers, economic development agencies, chambers of commerce, and the business community at large. Nominees are then asked to complete an application which explains their innovation and the impact it has made on Maryland.
A distinguished panel of judges reviewed the applications and selected 25 winners for 2009, including the top Innovator of the Year. The winners were honored on October 14 at a cocktail reception, held at Baltimore’s American Visionary Art Museum. Winners also were profiled in a special magazine that was included in the October 16 issue of The Daily Record.
For more information about The Daily Record’s Innovator of the Year Awards, please visit www.mddailyrecord.com.
