Visual Workspace

[Guest guest]

I began participating in a diabetic collaborative a few months ago. The goal of

the project is to help improve the care of my patient's with chronic diseases.

I was paired with Bill Gordon, a coach who has experience with Lean and Six

Sigma (industrial engineering principals to improve quality and efficiency). I

wanted to update the group on our progress. (I created a photo album to

illustrate the what we did with the visual workspace. Check out the PHOTOs

section).

Visual Workspace: Each of my exam rooms is equipped with a medical cart. The

carts contain the supplies I need to do all of my procedures. There are 65

items in each cart. My medical assistant would go through each cart with a

check list to make sure it was in filled. It took her about 15 minutes to

review a cart and 30 minutes to review both carts. Unfortunately, in any thirty

minute span of time the phone can ring and my assistant will be distracted from

completing her task. The total time with distractions was often over an hour a

day to complete the task of filling the cart. Bill looked at the space and said

that in industry they would use silhouette of the objects in each drawer so the

operator wouldn't have to think. So, we created foam cutouts of each object in

every drawer. Now if you open a drawer you see immediately if something is

missing. It now takes my assistant only 2 minutes to complete filling both

carts, usually without any interruptions. We have saved nearly a half an hour a

day or more from this simple change. My assistant is happier because it doesn't

require cross referencing with the " supplies checklist " .