| Mayo Clinic’s Unusual Challenge: Overhaul a Business That’s Working - WSJ |
気になった箇所、抜粋しようと思ったものの、簡潔にまとめる能力がないことを思い出した。
The overhaul, called the Mayo Clinic 2020 Initiative, is well past the halfway point, and officials are seeing results of more than 400 projects aimed at squeezing costs and improving quality in services ranging from heart surgery to emergency-room waiting time.
Expanding the role of nurses in the care of epilepsy patients shaved an average of 17 minutes off the time doctors spent on a visit, increasing slots for new patients. Adding more clinicians to the emergency room during the afternoon reduced patient waiting times during high-demand evening hours.
The operating-room teams competed in contests to reduce the time from “wheels out”—when one patient’s surgery was over—to when the room was set up for the next patient. Results for each surgeon’s room were posted, and staff met to discuss what worked and what didn’t. No team was declared a winner, but the exercise trimmed average turnover times about 50% to between 20 and 30 minutes, Dr. Dearani says.
The overall effort revealed two main cost drivers: a patient’s length of stay and the surgeons’ use of mechanical heart valves. So many valve brands were on the shelf, Dr. Dearani says, “it was like going into a shoe store.”The clinic, one of America’s largest users of such valves, decided to use its purchasing power to negotiate lower prices and limit surgeons to models from two vendors.
In 2000, after undergoing an open-heart operation to replace the valve, she spent six days in the hospital.In May, the mother of two was back to have the device replaced. The morning after her third night, her doctors decided she was progressing so well they would discharge her to a hotel that day.
