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Waukesha, WI, Nov. 29, 2006 — GE Healthcare and Virtua Health today announced impressive results from the second Lean Healthcare Workshop recently held at Virtua facilities in New Jersey. Attendees learned about the real-world application of Lean within the healthcare environment and participated in five simultaneous Kaizen events targeting issues such as eliminating unnecessary steps, optimizing workspace, and managing inventory. The week-long program built on Virtua's widely recognized achievements over the past several years in terms of establishing organizational excellence and on the progress made during their first Lean Healthcare seminar completed earlier this year.

"This second Lean event has definitely exceeded our expectations," says Rich Miller, President and CEO of Virtua Health. "The scope of transformational activity accomplished within one week is truly inspiring, and it was especially gratifying to see the tremendous teamwork and commitment to change that was evident throughout this process."

Overall, the use of Lean techniques at Virtua has translated to fewer delays, higher staff and patient satisfaction, better communication, and greater departmental efficiency. Each Kaizen was selected for its potential to create meaningful change and for its alignment with Virtua's "Star" initiative, which centers on the patient by concentrating on Excellent Service, Resource Stewardship, Highest Clinical Quality and Safety, Best People, and Caring Culture. In addition to providing a unique learning opportunity, the workshop produced an immediate impact on common challenges and demonstrated the value of Lean in creating a more efficient patient care environment.

"We are proud of our ongoing relationship with Virtua Health, and appreciate the opportunity for collaboration on this latest initiative," says Rob Reilly general manager for GE Healthcare's Performance Solutions and America's Service Sales. "Lean is clearly proving its value in healthcare, and Virtua continues to prove its capacity and enthusiasm for change by adapting new techniques in their quest for excellence."

The Kaizen events focused on five specific areas, with a few of the results highlighted below:

• Overcoming space constraints and improving communication in the operating room and emergency department at the Virtua West Jersey Berlin campus. Results include discarding unused supplies from the OR supply room; creating an ergonomically safer environment and addressing patient satisfaction by improving the registration process.
  
  
• Improving order processing and workstations for Virtua Memorial Hospital nursing. Results include a decrease in order processing time by 46%; an increase in first pass yield for order completion by 35%, and improving line of sight to patient.
  
  
• B>Improving processes for patient accounting and Medicare billing. Results include increased cash flow by $287K by decreasing cycle time by 25 days, and increased revenue by $173K/yr by limiting the number of outsourced claims.
  
  
• Streamlining process for chart retrieval at the Tatum-Brown Family Practice Center. Results include reducing the number of chart locations by 33%; reducing time spent looking for charts by 66%, and creating a foundation for visual management.
  
  
• Optimizing lab specimen process at Virtua West Jersey Hospital - Voorhees histology. Results include reduced turnaround time in histology by 104 minutes; reduced turnaround time in pathology by 108 minutes; and elimination of 1200ft/day for the transcriptionist.

The teams developed detailed plans to sustain improvements, and in some cases, uncovered opportunities for future Six Sigma and Lean projects, which they will pursue in the weeks ahead.

Source: GE Healthcare