title:
Blood Bank Professionals' Perspective on Lean Culture and Efficiency
creator:
El-Alami, Hassan
subject:
Dissertations, Academic.
description:
The rising cost of health care has led hospitals to think about ways to do things differently. The objective is to deliver the best care in the most efficient way, basically cutting the waste from the process, otherwise called lean processes (Spear, 2005). The question that comes next is how to institute a lean culture? How can people start thinking differently to institute more efficient work practices? How can people perform their work in a lean way? How can they change what they do to become more efficient? And the hardest question of all, how can people who have been doing something for tens of years change to do it differently? These questions become difficult in the blood bank. The blood bank is a highly regulated department in the hospital. Different government and non-government organizations have put standards of work practices in the blood bank. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), American Association of Blood Banks (AABB), College of American Pathologists (CAP), and The Joint Commission for Accreditation and Certification of Health Care Organization are some of these organizations that regulate, provide standards and inspect blood banks. For any blood bank to succeed, it must follow these standards. The standards go under review and get changed semi-annually, annually, bi-annually or less often, depending on the organization. The change process is slow and cosmetic in many instances. Moreover, it instills in the blood bank worker a sense of rigidity and resistance to change. These factors make change a harder process in the blood bank. Nevertheless, the blood bank has to adopt more efficient practices along with the hospital to decrease cost, and improve healthcare. It has to become a leaner department like the rest of the hospital. The fundamental idea behind lean thinking is that everything is a process. Stream lining the process and eliminating waste from it makes it a lean process. Although this sounds simple, the key issue is change. A conceptual and behavioral change that will lead to process change. In the case of the blood bank, it is important for the blood bank to change its processes and at the same time comply with the regulation and standard culture expected of it. This has to happen through the healthcare professionals who operate the blood bank and execute its processes. They need to adopt this change and make the processes leaner and more efficient.
publisher:
Simmons College (Boston, Mass.)
contributor:
date:
2016
type:
Text
format:
1 PDF (141 Pages_
identifier:
td_hpe_2016_hea
source:
language:
English
relation:
coverage:
rights:
Material from the Simmons University Archives collections are made available for study purposes only. For more information, or to request rights to reproduce or reuse any material, contact the University Archives at archives@simmons.edu.
