RIT providing Lean Six Sigma training for Crouse & Welch Allyn workers, EMS providers

SYRACUSE — The Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) is again providing Lean Six Sigma training to a group of employees from Crouse Hospital, engineers from Welch Allyn, and regional emergency-medical service (EMS) providers.

The training at Crouse started the week of April 15.

The training and performance-improvement collaboration, which Crouse launched in 2012 with RIT and Rural/Metro, continues through late June. When the 25 participants finish the course and their respective performance-improvement projects, RIT will award those involved Lean Six Sigma “Green Belt” certification.

Crouse already uses Lean Six Sigma in its quality-improvement efforts, says Derrick Suehs, chief-quality officer at Crouse Hospital. It’s designed to improve work processes and reduce complications from a clinical and operational perspective.

Lean is a performance-improvement methodology which had its start in the manufacturing sector, with a focus on decreasing waste within a given process, according to Crouse. Six Sigma is process to improve performance by decreasing variation within a system.

Over the years, according to Crouse, experts have recognized the synergy of the once-considered separate improvement methods.

When the process is put in place, it creates improvements that drive customer satisfaction and, in the case of health care, is intended to improve medical care and outcomes.

Professors from RIT’s Center for Quality and Applied Statistics and its Center for Excellence in Lean Enterprise are providing the training. A New York State Business Development Grant, managed through Onondaga Community College, is paying for the training.

The Crouse program is the first and only Lean Six Sigma training program in the U.S. that includes a hospital, EMS providers, and a leading manufacturer, Crouse contends.

About the training

The training involves five project teams, each comprised of five members, including employees at both Welch Allyn and Crouse Hospital, as well as EMS providers.

Crouse has a dozen participants involved, including workers in the hospital’s emergency services, neurological services, obstetrical services, patient and guest relations, and medical/surgical nursing, with a mix of directors, managers, and front-line staff, says Dr. Michael Jorolemon, senior quality officer for emergency services at Crouse.

The six participants from Welch Allyn include employees from its research, new product development, information systems, and business operations. 

The seven EMS members have relationships with several different agencies or departments, representing Onondaga, Cayuga, and Cortland counties, Jorolemon added. The agencies include North Onondaga Volunteer Ambulance (NOVA), North Area Volunteer Ambulance Corp. (NAVAC), and fire departments serving communities such as Jordan, Weedsport, and Cortland. 

The teams are learning and applying the principles of Lean Six Sigma, while working on projects to improve the quality of care around stroke patients, those patients needing spinal immobilization, obstetrical patients, and the throughput of patients in the health-care system, Crouse said.

Each team is working on a separate problem, says Jorolemon.

One team is working on the patient experience. “How do you maximize that and make that the best possible experience for them and their family,” Jorolemon says.

A second group is working on the mobilization of patients, including the state guidelines that emergency-medical workers must follow in transporting a patient to a hospital.

“When we transfer that patient to the hospital, [are] there opportunities there to manage that mobilized patient quicker, more effectively because they can develop complications if they’re mobilized too long,” he says.

Another team is examining medical throughput, a term that applies analytic instruments specifying the number of tests that can be performed in a given time.

Other teams are focused on the care of obstetric (pregnant) patients and stroke patients, and examining methods to figure out if medical personnel can begin caring for those patients quicker and transmit the information to the hospital more effectively and efficiently. 

“We’re on the clock because certain therapies have to be started from the time they hit the hospital … [and] need to be done within an hour,” Jorolemon says.

The effort is meant to drive better outcomes for the patient, he adds.

The purpose of the training is to do “the right thing at the earliest opportunity,” says Suehs.

“And as a result of that, you’re able to reduce your time in the [emergency department], so that reduces cost. You’re able to prepare the team so they know what to do and therefore, there’s an efficiency improvement that comes into play there,” Suehs says.

Handling situations the proper way from the beginning of care reduces complications and creates better care plans, he adds.

When asked if the training will eventually lead to potential cost savings for the patient or Crouse Hospital, Suehs indicated that it’s hard to know what money might be saved because the processes aren’t completed, Suehs says.

One Welch Allyn official sees the training as beneficial.

“Through this partnership, our leaders and new product-development teams will obtain a better understanding of our customer’s issues that impact performance, efficiency and effectiveness,” Tony Wagner, Welch Allyn senior director for new product development, said in the Crouse news release.

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com