Best Practice

1. Change the organizational culture of Virginia Mason Medical Center

The clear correlation with Six aims of Chasm described by Institute of Medicine in 2001.

Patient-centered aim —providing care that is respectful of and responsive to

individual patient preferences, needs, and values and ensuring that patient values

guide all clinical decisions.

Old organizational structure:

“The doctors were kings of the hill”(p.163) The institution and all major decisions revolved around the physicians .The organization was oriented to fulfill the providers needs and meet their expectations. VMMC needed to be a great place to providers, but patients had to come first.

New organizational structure:

Create the patient -centered system instead of physician focused one. “The patient is a God” should be the central concept of VMMC. The patient needs to be at the top of the organizational pyramid above everything and everyone else. He supposed to be “at the center of the universe” based on Dr. Gary Kaplan plan.

• Efficient aim—avoiding waste, including waste of equipment, supplies, ideas,

and energy

Adoption the knowledge and experience from famous non medical related industries, like TPS, Boeing ,General Electric ,Wire mold and other very prosper companies help leading team and eventually the entire medical facility make a significant change of organizational structure.

Old organizational structure:

Inefficient usage of the space –each waiting area is about 300 square feet and there are around 100 waiting areas in the medial facility.

The wasted time for patients and their relatives is 45 minutes on average in each waiting area.

The reduction productivity of all patients and relatives who were missing work or school.

“Aren’t you ashamed?”

New organizational structure:

By reducing and eventually eliminating any waste at working place the leadership team and employees could...