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February 2015 | O U T PAT I E N TS U R G E R Y. N E T
Achieving World-Class Turnover Time
Help in the never-ending battle to shorten the
time between wheels out to wheels in.
Jim burger | associate editor
z ALL FOR ONE At Arkansas Children's Hospital, the emphasis is on teamwork and accountability.
Kelley
Cooper,
arkansas
Children's
Hospital
A
Colorado hospital reduced average turnover time from 26 min-
utes to 20. How did they do it? The effort began with observa-
tion. What was costing turnover teams time? What efforts
were being duplicated? What could be done better and faster?
The idea, says Treena Dockery, MBA/HCM, CLM, process
improvement consultant at University of Colorado Health, was to have a
variety of stakeholders step back, observe everything about the process
and try to identify waste, using lean techniques and principles. To broad-
en their perspective, they observed more than 10 cases over multiple
shifts and at multiple times throughout the day at Poudre Valley Hospital
in Fort Collins, Colo. Here's what they discovered: