You’ve been hired as a lean coordinator at a major hospital and your job descrip
ID: 380897 • Letter: Y
Question
You’ve been hired as a lean coordinator at a major hospital and your job description requires you to look for ways to reduce costs and, from an operational perspective, improve patient outcomes. You’re looking at patient data and discover that between two or three times per month, a doctor will leave a sponge or other foreign object inside of a patient during an operation. It’s always a different doctor so it isn’t a question of a physician’s competence. You’re presenting a recommendation to senior management on how to eliminate the possibility of leaving sponges (or anything else) inside of a patient. In one to two paragraphs, describe your recommendation. (think of this as a process and not an individual failing)
Explanation / Answer
Managing a hospital has to be one of the most difficult task for a coordinator because unlike other business organizations in order to do business and incur profit, the hospitals cannot put forward rules just like that. The primary and the most important objective of a hospital is to look after the patients and their well being, making profit is secondary here because the hospital aims at providing healthcare and that is of utmost importance. In order to make profit the hospital should aim at patient well being at the highest level which will form a reputation of the hospital in the industry along with the sense of acceptance of the hospital.
While analyzing the last few year's patient data of the hospital there are various issues that have come to my notice for which the hospital had to bear huge expenses and not just for one instance but many. The most frequent incident is the surgeon accidentally leaving something inside the patient while operating. I would not say that this is a very common issue but yes, this issue is observed frequently and almost in all hospitals. While the operation is done the doctor goes through a lot of things in his mind and has to look after various issues with the patient and the operation techniques, therefore there has been situations where a doctor has left behind sponge or other foreign objects in the patient's body. Most of the times the object is a sponge because the doctor and the assistants keep track of the aids and instruments used and required for the operation and they monitor that once the operation is done, but sponge is something that is not kept track of because that is needed in abundance. This has led to the issue of leaving sponge in the patient body which has created issue in the patient health and there have been instances where the patient has filed a lawsuit against the hospital and doctors resulting in loss of the organization.
The issue is not doctor specific and it has happened with many of the surgeons hence there should be a proper process to eliminate such discrepancies.
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