Industry news: UCT boosts Cape hospitals efficiency

The UCT GSB Best Practice Workshop, run in association with Japan's Association for Overseas Technical Scholarship this July, has for the past 12 years trained managers from across a range or sectors.

According to Professor Norman Faull, who directs the Workshop annually, it has in the past usually been run on a manufacturing business shopfloor, but this year offers managers taking the course an entirely new environment to learn in and at the end will give the hospital tangible ways to boost its efficiency.

“New research by the UCT GSB and other leading education institutions like Harvard University is proving that Lean operation systems can be usefully applied to improve healthcare.

"This is exciting new work that is yielding remarkable results globally. The manufacturing sector has earned a reputation for quality and efficiency unparalleled in other industries, reducing costs while simultaneously increasing quality. Now there is evidence that these methods can work in other areas, particularly in healthcare,” he said.

The Lean approach is an integrated set of industrial principles and methods that grew out of a study of the Japanese automobile industry and has being developed into a powerful set of tools that is revolutionising the manufacturing and other sectors across the globe. As its name suggests, it enables companies to reduce waste and costs, but at the same time increase standards and productivity.

Faull said Workshop participants are assigned actual problems in a workplace and are tasked to identify causes, propose countermeasures, and implement a solution. Throughout the learning they will also have some of the best Lean expertise in the world to guide them. The Workshop uses a combination of classroom lectures and team-based problem solving.

“With the health sector in South Africa under the siege of rising costs and falling services and being complex interactive system, the benefits made possible by lean methods could be a key to greater efficiency.”

One of the local case studies that has motivated the Workshop taking place at GF Jooste, was a project conducted at the hospital last year.

At GFH, 150 - 200 people per day enter the Accident and Emergency (A&E) unit, many in a very poor way - that translates to 50 000 to 70 000 people per year.
On the project, guided by Faull, the principles and philosophies of Lean proved useful in terms of improved service delivery in the Triage section of the A&E Unit (Triage is the process for assessing and sorting injured people based on their need for or likely benefit from immediate medical treatment).

Faull added that the Workshop projects would look at several departments at the hospital, including the outpatient unit, the transferring and discharging processes, the trauma/emergency clinic and the pharmacy.

“Around the world, a growing number of cases are emerging of Lean tools being used to great effect in the battle for greater efficiency in healthcare, adding to the cases of successful implementation in many spheres of business. The Workshop is an opportunity for managers across the South African healthcare landscape to get valuable new tools that can make a real impact at very little cost.”

The Workshop will be led by a Japanese “guru” in Lean Manufacturing Techniques, Takeyuki Furuhashi, who has over 30 years experience in training companies in the Toyota Production System and is facilitated by Competitive Capabilities International.
The course, which runs from 30 July - 3 August is run by the GSB Executive Education unit, which has been rated in the global top ten by the Economist Intelligence Unit in 2005 and 2006.

For more information contact Junita Abrahams on (021) 406 1323 or abrahams@gsb.uct.ac.za.