Recently, I wrote about the benefits of using the SIPOC diagram for process identification and process control.   As a profession, we still struggle with this concept of process approach or process management. We too often revert back to our old practices of addressing issues by revising our procedures and conducting training on the newly revised procedure. We should be smart enough not to keep doing the same things and expect different results.

Here’s a summary of the effects of our decades of managing issues by procedure changes and training:

• Medication errors occur in one-half (50%) of all surgeries
• One in three patients are harmed during a hospital stay and of this 33%, 7% either die or are permanently harmed
• John James, Ph.D., states, “the true number of premature deaths associated with preventable harm to patients was estimated at more than 400,000 per year”
• ECRI Institutes 2015 List of Top 10 patient safety concerns are all process safety related.
• The number of hospitals that received an “F” safety grade from Leapfrog increased from 20 in the spring to 34 this fall (2015).

How does this continue to be acceptable in 2016? I realize that many smart people are working diligently to fix these issues. However, until we change how we look at our hospitals as a series of complex processes and begin to manage these processes, we will never make any meaningful effect on these dire statistics.

Enter ISO 9001:2015, Clause 8.3 Design and development of products and services. It’s that last word “services” that gives us the hook. Design and development in ISO 9001:2008 only required products and “may also apply the requirements given in 7.3…of product realization processes”. The option for processes (aka services) disappears in 2015.   This presents an opportunity to make a cultural shift in how we now address issues from a process perspective.

By taking the time to understand our critical processes, their sequence and interaction, we are more capable of improving our processes. The disciplines of Clause 8.3 will now allow us a structured method of redesigning these processes for sustainable solutions.   While this is not rocket science, it is often perceived as such.

Case in point, while I was conducting training at a very respected hospital system during the height of the “Ebola Crisis”, every participant would leave intermittently to attend training on how to manage an Ebola patient should one present to their hospital. The individual responsible for creating and conducting the training was also in our class. When we began using the Ebola crisis as an example of managing processes, I was shocked when that individual bolted out of the class. We simply discussed all of the possible “inputs” to managing an Ebola patient by including the Valet Parking attendants as one possible input. That’s when he bolted. This respected hospital system had not considered that possible input of an Ebola patient. Additionally, the nurse responsible for managing the utilization review process for physicians stated that she would now manage that process differently since she now had a new understanding of process. Didn’t Deming say that if you put a good person in a bad process, the bad process always wins?

This new requirement for controlling the design and development of our processes could not have come at a better time for healthcare. Implementing this new requirement should not be taken lightly. The lives that it may save will help us begin to whittle away at those shocking statistics above. Let’s make Deming’s saying passé in healthcare. Let’s only accept what our patients expect- good processes.

Bio:

Ted Schmidt is a Pharmacist, a Certified Enterprise Risk Manager (CERM©), and a Senior Advisor with BlueSynergy Associates, LLC. BlueSynergy Associates maximize innovation, experience and customer perspective to reduce risk and make hospitals a safer environment. He currently advises and instructs hospitals in quality, risk, safety and environmental management systems. Ted led the largest ISO 9001 implementation in healthcare at the Veterans Administration. He is a Senior Member of the American Society for Quality and a certified Lead Auditor in quality management systems by Exemplar Global. He can be reached by email at tschmidt@bluesynergyassociates.com. Follow BlueSynergy on LinkedIn and Twitter