Get ready for Clinical Practice Redesign - Saskatchewan Medical ...

health care
“No state or province that I’m aware of in the
world has attempted it on this scale.”
front lines - in this case, health care workers, patients and
their families.
Florizone admits he was skeptical until he participated in
a workshop at Seattle’s Virginia Mason Medical Centre in
2004.
“It’s going to take a lot of leadership to be able to convince
people this isn’t a fad,” Florizone said. “There’s only
one way to convince the skeptic and that’s the way I was
convinced - let’s do it.”
It is a mistake to think health care is so different from
other industries that it can’t use the same solutions manufacturers
have already found to similar problems, Florizone
said.
“The old way of cost-cutting was absolutely wrong-headed,”
he said. “I realized for the first time why we were so
mistaken in the ‘80s and ‘90s when we were cutting budgets
and ending up with poor service at the end of the
day.”
Deciding what to tackle is another key component of lean
management. Florizone said an organization needs to
pick just a couple of top priorities and focus intensely on
them before moving on to the rest of its wish list. “If everything’s
a priority, nothing’s a priority.”
The government has organized lean’s provincial rollout
into two phases.
The planning phase in lean management is usually called
hoshin kanri, a Japanese phrase. The government is calling
it ‘strategy deployment.’
Unlike current strategic planning, high-level executives
will run their proposed priorities before teams of lowerlevel
managers and front-line workers, and then consider
their feedback before proceeding.
12 Spring 2012 SMA News Digest
-Dan Florizone, Deputy Minister of Health
Phase two will take several years and involves building up
local expertise and getting more than 43,000 workers in
the province’s health regions, the Saskatchewan Cancer
Agency, the Health Quality Council and the Health Ministry
thinking like a synchronized lean machine: Identify
waste, test a possible fix, evaluate the outcome and repeat.
The cycle can, and should, go on forever.
To do this, the province needs a lean expert, or sensei, to
lead it. This fall, the Saskatchewan Association of Health
Organizations issued two requests for proposals - one
contract for about six months of lean leadership to do the
first phase of planning - hoshin kanri - and a longer-term
contract to help roll out the lean system.
SAHO Past President and CEO Susan Antosh said the first
contract was awarded in October to American consultants
John Black and Associates. The second contract has not
yet been awarded.
The consultants won’t just teach and run, she said - the
region wants to build a long-term relationship with someone
who has the experience and knowledge to guide them
through years of significant cultural change.
The SMA is currently in discussions with the provincial
government regarding lean implementation and the role
for physicians in the transformation process.