Lean Strategies
Lean process improvements focus on the activities your staff is performing. Lean tools and concepts can be used in any setting to help improve processes, increase efficiency, reduce waste, increase revenue and, overall, add value to the end user.
Lean is best utilized when it sparks a total change in culture, not only affecting the way people work, but, more importantly, the way people think.
These philosophies help ensure that all processes are designed to allow employees to work smarter, not harder, with all steps adding value towards the end goal. In a world where people want to get a lot while having few resources, Lean offers a great way to maximize efficiency and productivity in any workplace. We help to create a positive culture change and continuous improvement.
Let us help your organization utilize Lean to improve processes in any of the following areas:
• Administrative functions - including scheduling, eligibility, client intake and discharge, filing and overall front office organization
• Patient/Client throughput
• Billing or Invoicing
• Payment Posting
• Working AR
• And many more!
What are the Eight Wastes identified through Lean?
• Over-Production - Doing more than is needed by the customer or doing it before it is needed
• Inventory - Excess inventory costs through financial costs, storage and movement costs, spoilage and wastage
• Transportation - Unnecessary movement of the product in the system
• Motion - Unnecessary movement by employees
• Waiting - Waiting for the next event to occur or the next work activity
• Defects - Time spent doing something incorrectly, inspecting errors, or fixing errors
• Excess Processing - Doing work that is not valued by the customer, or caused by definitions of quality not aligned with needs
• Human Potential - Waste and loss due to inappropriate utilization of resources, not engaging employees, listening to their needs, and supporting their careers
In most healthcare settings:
• 80% or more of the time spent in a healthcare process is waste.
• Most of the patient time is spent waiting, moving, a test-and-treat cycle, etc, with very little touch time with the patient. The process revolves around a stop and go mentality - where patients receive a value-added step and then wait and wait, then receive another value added step, then wait and wait and wait, and so on and so on.
Let us help you transform your processes, reduce waste, increase efficiency and improve quality - positively affecting your bottom line
Project Management
Webster's defines Project Management as "the discipline of initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing the work of a team to achieve specific goals and meet specific success criteria."
Project management knowledge focuses on ten areas:
- Integration
- Scope
- Time
- Communications
- Risk management
- Quality
- Procurement
- Human resources
- Stakeholder management
- Cost
Whether the project is large or small, having a strong leader that can map out the stages of the process, follow up regularly on those steps and organize all of the contacts, actions and communications is critical to the success of your project. However, the project, if not well-planned, can become a disaster.
Our Project Managers:
• Have the expertise necessary to tackle the project for you,
• Hold key stakeholders accountable,
• Coordinate not only with your staff, but any outside vendors and
• Ensure your project stays on track to its finish date to take the stress off your managers and allow them to focus on their daily duties.
Ultimately, the goal is to ensure project success, minimize costs and improve quality.
Our staff is experienced with practice management system and electronic record system projects, large-scale IT initiatives, due diligence for mergers and acquisitions, and so much more. Project management at every step of the process is the surest way to achieve the intended results.
Let us take the guesswork out of project planning. We will work with your team throughout all of the phases - initiation, planning, communication and implementation. We believe that people, process and technology are all critical components to an effective outcome within a project.
We can help with your next project!
Reporting and Data Analytics
In our technology-driven world, having information is not the problem. The problem is:
• Getting the information, or the data in a format that is usable, and
• Translating that data into a format that facilitates understanding and allows business critical decisions to be made.
Typically, reports are the key metrics your business uses to evaluate success, growth, and areas in need of improvement. You need a solution that provides dashboard reporting to help you run the business.
Our analysts provide solutions that will empower you to utilize data to manage and grow your business. With almost every software that we support, we look for more effective ways to provide key performance indicators, trended reports, and leverage our analysis skills to be proactive with data that can impact your bottom line. With our team's advanced Excel skills, we are able to produce almost any report that is needed for your business.
We help you by:
• Analyzing your data
• Asking the critical questions impacting your organization.
• Freeing up your staff to focus on more pressing issues
• Delivering reports in a concise, user-friendly format at the frequency your business needs to stay on top of your finances.
• Reviewing reports prior to delivery for any inconsistencies or problem points we are able to identify.
• Working with your staff so that they understand how to utilize the tools that we create.
Contact Legacy regarding how we can help you with reporting!
Kaizen Event
What is Kaizen? I've heard of it, but I don't really understand it.
In Japanese, the word Kaizen generally means "improvement", Kai being "change" and Zen being "good". So you could say…good change, or change is good.
It is really a business philosophy of continuous improvement or work practices and personnel efficiency. Kaizen events are particularly helpful when trying to improve a process that impacts multiple people or departments, as it promotes change through a culture of teamwork and collaboration. The event brings together all disciplines throughout a process, evoking ideas and input from all levels of staff. The graphic below outlines all steps of a kaizen event, from inception to completion and subsequent continuous improvement.
The first step in initiating a kaizen event is targeting the exact process your business needs to improve (or work on first).
In selecting the process, be sure to clearly define the outcomes and goals you hope to achieve from the process improvement. As a group, we need to review the process through data analysis to establish a baseline for the current state.
The next step is to develop the team that will participate in the event.
We will clearly outline all people, departments, areas or functions that are affected and/or touched by the process, as at least one person from each process step will need to be included during the event. This is imperative in order to assure that no one will be affected by the process changes, without having input in the changes first.
Step three simply involves scheduling the event, bearing in mind schedules and the affect that absences will have on the functions of the business.
During the actual event, the most important thing to remember is teamwork. There often isn't a right answer, or a wrong suggestion, so everyone should be mindful to allow any and all input from staff.
The Kaizen event will flow according to the following timeline.
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- The team will first map out the current state of the process, being sure to list all steps, how all information flows into and out of the process, and how other processes interact and intersect.
- Seeing the current state detailed in front of the team will be a big eye-opener, as most staff are usually unaware of just how much is involved.
- The next step will be to identify all areas of wasted time or those steps that do not add value to the end product or goal.
- Asking yourself "is a customer/patient/client willing to pay for that step?"
- Eliminating the waste reducing unnecessary tasks, reducing the time to complete the process and adding the most value to the end user.
- The final step of the event will then be to map out what the future state process will look like, with only necessary steps included.
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The future state should be the ideal process, where all team members agree to the changes and updated steps.
After the Kaizen event, the new process will be documented as standard work and will be given to all remaining employees of the business.
Everyone must review and sign off on the new process structure. It will take working as a team to ensure that the new process starts smoothly and runs successfully. After the go-live date, additional data will be collected to compare against the baseline and validate the improvements.
We will be there with you through the entire process, because we are a team.
If you are struggling with creating efficient processes in your office, let Legacy facilitate a Kaizen event for you! We'll help you develop new processes for your everyday tasks that will leave your office empowered and running smoothly.