NHS at Bolton - there's two sides to every story

I've received some anonymous comments on the NHS Bolton/Toyota story - I think they're worth Blogging as they show that there are at least two sides to every story!

Anonymous comment 1

Superbug cases at hospital soar by nearly halfBy Jane LavenderTHE number of people infected with a potentially deadly superbug at the Royal Bolton Hospital has gone up by nearly half.Rates of Clostridium Difficile, which can cause severe diarrhoea and is especially dangerous to the elderly, have increased from 208 in 2004 to 297 last year, according to Government statistics.And the number of people infected with MRSA, which is an infection in the blood, has also gone up from 17 between April and September last year, to 19 between October, 2005, and March this year. From April to September, 2004, there were just 14 cases.

Anonymous comment 2

17, 19, 14? Surely that's just variation

Anonymous comment 3

Threat of strike at cuts hospitalBy Jane LavenderUNION bosses at the Royal Bolton Hospital say they are prepared to hold a ballot on industrial action in a bid to protect patient services.Senior UNISON members say they are horrified at plans for £8 million worth of cuts at the hospital.

Anonymous comment 4

Like Toyota? They're having a laugh.

Anonymous comment 5

Well they can't take it down now can they. That would say even more.

NHS - 250 steps to discharge a patient!

This picture appeared in The Times recently, showing that more than 250 different interactions took place to discharge a patient with complex health problems. With the NHS trying to adopt "lean", one process involving a routine blood sample was reduced from 309 steps to 57 with just simple changes.

They want to "improve service by better understanding how patient demand varies, and identifying and removing the valueless activities that create bottlenecks in the system.

Early results of a study in Bolton showed the lean method helped to cut by a third death rates for patients having hip operations, reduced paperwork in the trauma unit by 42%, and halved the amount of space needed by the pathology dept.

The Chief Executive of Bolton hospital trust said "When we started out, some people were very sceptical. But I've never seen anything that energises staff in this way".

The Government keep saying that the NHS must increase productivity and cut waste before they can justify more public funding. At least in this pilot study, hospital chiefs seem to have understood the new definition that Productivity = maximise customer satisfaction and eliminate waste and rework.

NHS - thinking like Toyota

"Chief Executives of NHS Trusts vowed yesterday to adopt the techniques of Tesco and Toyota to save lives and reduce costs by introducing the principle of "lean" management pioneered by successful companies. By eliminating unnecessary processes, the NHS could speed a patient's progress from A&E to the operating theatre.......

The approach was tested in Bolton hospitals, where mortality rates were cut by at least a third after services were redesigned around the needs of patients instead of the convenience of staff.

(Guardian 15th June 2006)

Toyota or Toyoda?

True or False?
Toyota changed its name from Toyoda in 1937 because when written in Japanese it not only looks better, but it only needs eight brush strokes - a lucky number in Japan.

(from Summer 2006 "If." - The Toyota magazine)

Well... is it true or false? Doesn't say. And I thought Seven was the Japanese lucky number!?

Call centre technology - steam driven

I was watching an agent in a call centre of a mobile phone company. Lots of technology to help - information screens, agent script, extensive intranet, and so on. In a lull between call rushes, she switched to screening emails. Each email is assigned to a different "business stream", each of which have differing Service Level Agreements for responding to email. Her first action was to identify the Business Stream: then refer to a fairly dog-eared piece of paper sellotaped to her workstation, being a list of the "due by" number of days in which a response is promised; then she referred to her desk calendar and counted forward 10, 15, or 20 days according to the Business Stream and entered that date alongside the email on her screen; then she would allocate the email to the appropriate team for response.

No value added there then!