We talked to Helen Zak of the ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value about the challenges the healthcare industry is facing
INTERVIEW – At the latest European Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit, we sat down with Helen Zak for a few minutes to discuss the state of change in the healthcare sector.
Roberto Priolo: How do you identify a successful lean transformation, in your opinion?
Helen Zak: Process matters too, not just results. This means that the organization that completes a successful lean turnaround is one that has a clear focus on process.
Secondly, in a lean organization, employees are the true engine of value creation and are actively engaged in problem solving and continuous improvement (each person contributes hundreds of new ideas every year). Finally, there are executive teams getting involved and practicing what they preach (going to the gemba, role modeling and using A3 forms).
In essence, there are systems, behaviors and – yes – tools working together in harmony.
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RP: What are some of the systemic challenges healthcare faces today?
HZ: The payment system is certainly one. In its current form, it leads to bad behaviors, rewarding quantity over quality. Until that changes, we will keep seeing the same poor results we see today. Tragically, this means that we are unintentionally harming ourselves and dying every day.
Healthcare has also become so complex that it is difficult to manage. We need systems architects in the industry to rationalize the way we work. Lean teams and heroic leaders are starting to put the right systems in place, but this is not yet happening across the sector. It still takes a special hospital to have a special leader who can see the future; sadly, most places are not like that.
We tend to see a lack of leadership and vision, rather than a lack of will (or strength of character) to do the hard work of change.
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RP: What makes it so difficult to understand the role of the management system?
HZ: Some senior healthcare executives have been successful thanks to a certain set of behaviors, but these are not the behaviors you need in a lean management system.
As we all know, habits are hard to break, and not everyone is willing to do so. It takes a good platform, first of all, and then a leader who understands the need to change themselves.
In addition, people don't know how to recognize what good looks like; they only know what has brought them success. That is why we take them to ThedaCare, Virginia Mason and other organizations to show them how to recognize what good looks like, so that they have the mental model that allows them to understand lean. These are just small steps, but they help us plant the seed in their heads. When they see how fundamentally different a lean organization is, they begin to understand – “there are no big problems”, “this ward is not chaotic” or “is that the manager at the meeting board?”.
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RP: What has the ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value been doing recently?
HZ: We are trying to share all the new knowledge that is emerging. Our job is to spread the lessons we learn from organizations around the world (for example, through conferences, gemba visits and publications, such as John Toussaint's latest book, “Management on the Mend”).
Our new frontier, however, is to focus more on CEOs, because we firmly believe you cannot have a lean transformation only from the bottom up. We see this as a big gap in the industry and we are working hard to close it, mainly by trying to get CEOs to understand that transformations start with them and by coaching them on what they need to do (from defining the organization's true north to the strategy deployment process). We are trying to help them understand their role.
Source: Planet Lean.
