Leader Post -Regina

Good news story
By Lionel Forrester, November 14, 2014
 
A little good news: The lean objective is to encourage and empower employees of a business to observe, suggest and employ improvements, however minimal they might appear, to the workflow.
 
I routinely visit the Pasqua Infusion Clinic. I would appear at the hospital registration desk an hour early, wait my turn, proceed to the clinic and have my procedure done.
 
For my last visit, I was told I could skip the registration desk and come directly to the clinic.
 
I asked the receptionist, "Is this part of lean?" She answered "It's our little part. We used to be bottlenecked by lineups at registration, which caused late appointments, upsetting our scheduling."
 
Beyond reducing the scheduling problem, I see these immediate benefits:
 
Lessened workload at registration; say, five minutes for the clerk;
 
A one-hour time saving for patients;
 
One hour less parking requirement;
 
Less wear and tear on the blue card machine creating wrist ID bands, and;
 
Savings on the blue cards, wristbands and pink paper forms.
 
Multiply these savings by the number of patient visits to that clinic over a year and you have the annual picture.
 
My quick calculation says that at 20 patients per day, about 400 registration clerk hours are saved, plus 1 , 2 5 0 parking space hours, 5,000 blue cards and 10,000 paper sheets To this work group, I say "Bravo!"
 
To the lean initiative, I say "Keep up the good work!"
 
And to the detractors, I say show me the benefit of just keeping on because "that's how we've always done it".
 
Lionel Forrester
 
Regina