Lean methodology and store floor management to improve patient-centeredness.

Once again this year, the BQS Institute for Quality and Patient Safety presented the award for the best change management project of the year at the Healthcare Industry Congress in Hamburg. This time the award went to Dr. med. Stefan Paech, the medical director of Kliniken Südostbayern AG. The coveted trophy was presented by jury members Ministerialrat Dr. Alexander Schmidt-Gernig from the Federal Ministry of Health and the Managing Director of the Department of Human Resources and Hospital Organization Dr. med. Bernd Metzinger from the German Hospital Association.

In addition to Kliniken Südostbayern, Krankenhaus Rummelsberg and Klinikum Fürth were also nominated. Dr. Martina Oldhafer, chairwoman of the jury and head of change management at the University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein, commented: "This year was something special. The three nominees addressed three central issues that concern us in patient care, but also at the strategic hospital management level. In addition to Kliniken Südostbayern with its outstanding approach to ward professionalization, Klinikum Fürth with its culture project based on positive leadership has tackled the root of effective leadership, and Krankenhaus Rummelsberg as part of Sana Kliniken AG with its establishment of a center for the care of paraplegics with the involvement of patients and all those involved in cross-sector care has demonstrated in an exceptional way how a successful and sustainable care model must be set up. All together with a convincing change management methodology."

About the winning project:

In the course of a restructuring phase in an economically strained initial situation, Kliniken Südostbayern AG (KSOB) developed a lean management strategy that focuses on the needs of the patient and at the same time increases productivity.

KSOB deliberately avoided extensive external support during implementation and instead used existing human resources. However, the existing structures were supplemented and coordinated in certain areas with the help of new organizational structures and the specially created positions of a general representative for process management and a lean management expert.
Even during the start-up phase in the summer of 2015, it became clear that all the approaches and methods from quality, process and project management available in the company were to be integrated; whereby "Lean" was not to be another delimited management project, but was to take place permanently on a daily basis throughout the company.

A central component in the implementation of the lean management approach was the team board as a central control instrument on every station. In the individual service areas, the board has the function of a steering wheel with a stored system of coordinates so that the employees are aligned daily with common patient care goals and can coordinate the path to goal achievement with each other (commitment). In addition to ensuring quality factors while minimizing risks, the standardization of cyclical work performance should also help reduce employee workload.
Using a team board, problems can be addressed in an uncomplicated manner. These are documented on a standardized topic card on the team board and made visible to all employees (transparency), so that appropriate solutions can be developed, implemented and checked as directly as possible across the hierarchy.
As a central starting point for daily, approximately ten-minute inter-professional meetings ("team boarding"), the team board serves to plan ward procedures and patient management, but also to coordinate and optimize interdisciplinary cooperation between the various professional groups.

The ward physician, the ward manager, the social service, the physiotherapist and the medical coding specialist regularly take part in the team boarding. Moderation is the responsibility of the ward manager, the deputy or the ward physician. In the implementation of the team boards, the staff position holders of the management are direct contacts and supporters.