Standardized care toyota

BACKGROUND: Health care organizations have increasingly embraced industrial methods, such as the Toyota Production System (TPS), to improve quality, safety, timeliness, and efficiency. However, the use of such methods in psychiatric hospitals has been limited. METHODS: A psychiatric hospital applied TPS principles to patient transfers to the outpatient medication management clinics (MMCs) from all other inpatient and outpatient services within the hospital's system...

BACKGROUND: Lean Thinking is a management philosophy derived from the manufacturing industry, where Toyota has long been the gold standard. Health care organizations have started to apply this approach to patient care. After initial experimentation, the University of Michigan Health System (UMHS) has adopted Lean Thinking as its uniform approach to quality improvement and is striving to become a complete Lean organization. PROJECTS: In 2005, the senior leadership selected an initial set of projects in areas that traced the patient's journey across different care settings within our health system...

OBJECTIVE: To measure the effectiveness of an industrial systems-engineering approach to a methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) prevention program. DESIGN: Before-after intervention study. SETTING: An intensive care unit (ICU) and a surgical unit that was not an ICU in the Pittsburgh Veterans Administration hospital. PATIENTS: All patients admitted to the study units. INTERVENTION: We implemented an MRSA infection control program that consisted of the following 4 elements: (1) the use of standard precautions for all patient contact, with emphasis on hand hygiene; (2) the use of contact precautions for interactions with patients known to be infected or colonized with MRSA; (3) the use of active surveillance cultures to identify patients who were asymptomatically colonized with MRSA; and (4) use of an industrial systems-engineering approach, the Toyota Production System, to facilitate consistent and reliable adherence to the infection control program...

Our objective was to determine whether the Toyota Production System process redesign resulted in diagnostic error reduction for patients who underwent cytologic evaluation of thyroid nodules. In this longitudinal, nonconcurrent cohort study, we compared the diagnostic error frequency of a thyroid aspiration service before and after implementation of error reduction initiatives consisting of adoption of a standardized diagnostic terminology scheme and an immediate interpretation service. A total of 2,424 patients underwent aspiration...

CONTEXT: Anatomic pathology laboratories use several quality assurance tools to detect errors and to improve patient safety. OBJECTIVE: To review some of the anatomic pathology laboratory patient safety quality assurance practices. DESIGN: Different standards and measures in anatomic pathology quality assurance and patient safety were reviewed. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Frequency of anatomic pathology laboratory error, variability in the use of specific quality assurance practices, and use of data for error reduction initiatives...

Recent Mongolian political, social and economic changes have had a great impact on its health care system and tuberculosis control program. The objective of this study is to assess time trend in incidence and mortality of tuberculosis and characteristics of notified tuberculosis cases in Mongolia. 1) Data on statistics of tuberculosis are obtained from reports of the National Tuberculosis Center in Mongolia. The mortality of tuberculosis in Mongolia shows a downward trend during 1985-1995. The number of notified tuberculosis cases had gradually decreased during 1985-1989...