Improving the Patient Visit Process in the Pre-treatment Phase

During the last decade, more healthcare organizations have been turning to Lean and data driven principles to improve the efficiency and generate a positive impact on throughout, patient satisfaction and quality care. Given the high competition in private healthcare market, the need for achieving higher quality medical care to attract new patients and retain existing patients is getting even more critical for private healthcare organizations such as infertility treatment clinics. This paper builds, tests, and reports the results from the application of value stream mapping during the pre-treatment stage in an infertility treatment clinic. In the case study presented here, we demonstrate how analyzing healthcare processes early in the patient journey and mapping the pre-treatment stage enables the organization to identify the bottlenecks, eliminate waste and deliver more efficient customized patient-focused care. After running a multitude of simulations, this study results in recommending two scenarios as the optimal future states that increase the capacity of the clinic, lower waiting times for patients, improve their experience, and lower the stress on the staff.