Reengineering the Cardiac Catheterization Lab Processes: A Lean Approach

Raghavan, Venkatesh; Venkatadri, Vikram; Kesavakumaran, Varun; Wang, Shengyong; Khasawneh, Mohammad; Srihari, Krishnaswami

doi:https://doi.org/10.1260/2040-2295.1.1.45

Journal of Healthcare Engineering

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Research Article | Open Access

Volume 1 | Article ID 485324 | https://doi.org/10.1260/2040-2295.1.1.45

Reengineering the Cardiac Catheterization Lab Processes: A Lean Approach

Venkatesh Raghavan,¹Vikram Venkatadri,¹Varun Kesavakumaran,¹Shengyong Wang,²Mohammad Khasawneh,¹and Krishnaswami Srihari¹

Abstract

This paper presents a cross-functional effort in a US community hospital for an overall process improvement in its Cardiac Catheterization Lab (CCL). One of the key system performance metrics identified was the patient turnaround time. The objective of this study was to identify the sources of delays in the system that lead to prolonged patient turnaround time using a structured lean approach. A set of qualitative recommendations were proposed and implemented. Quantification of some of these recommendations and certain additional ‘what-if’ scenarios were evaluated using Discrete Event Simulation (DES). The simulation results showed that significant reduction in patient turnaround time could be achieved if the proposed recommendations were implemented. This study demonstrated the benefits of adopting the lean philosophy in the continuous process improvement journey in the healthcare delivery arena.

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Copyright © 2010 Hindawi Publishing Corporation. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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