Recent Awards for the Implementation of Lean in the Laboratories
- 2007 - First Place Award, Best in Class Lean/Six Sigma Poster, Lab Quality Confab, Atlanta, GA- ("Lean Cultural Transformation in Surgical Pathology")
- 2007 - Project Excellence Award, Quality Expo Competition, Henry Ford Health System- ("Elimination of Patient and Specimen Misidentifications in Surgical Pathology")
- 2008 - McDevitt Excellence in Research Award, Blue Cross/Blue Shield Foundation- ("The Henry Ford Production System: Transforming to a Quality Culture")
- 2008 - Clinical Pathology Award, Best in Class Lean/Six Sigma Poster, Lab Quality Confab, Atlanta, GA- ("Focusing on the Patient: Using LEAN to Improve Wait Times and Faster Test Results")
- 2008 - Anatomic Pathology Award, Best in Class Lean/Six Sigma Poster, Lab Quality Confab, Atlanta, GA- ("Melding LEAN and Barcode Technology to Reduce In-Process Surgical Pathology Mis-Identifications")
- 2008 - Project Excellence Award, Quality Expo Competition, Henry Ford Health System (Focus on the Specimen: Using Lean to Improve the Total Laboratory Testing Process at Fairlane Medical Center)
- 2009 - First place award from the American Society for Quality, Minneapolis, MN for "Multi-Disciplinary LEAN Improvement of Total Clinical Laboratory Testing in an Outpatient Setting"
- 2010 - Project Excellence Award, Quality Expo Competition, Henry Ford Health System ("Patient Focus: Turn Around Time Improvement for Lymph Node Biopsy Work-up for Lymphoma")
Always changing. Always learning. Always improving. Always working to deliver the highest quality.
In the world of pathology and laboratory medicine, Henry Ford pathologists, lab technicians and staff have adopted an innovative and highly successful process improvement initiative that is changing the way labs deliver results to doctors and patients.
As one of the largest hospital-based labs in the United Sates, processing more than 11 million specimens annually, Henry Ford's labs had many of the same process issues endemic to labs everywhere.
Our team though decided to tackle the issues and find new methods for improving the production in the labs.
Taking a page from our founder, automotive pioneer Henry Ford and the famed Toyota Production System, the staff here adopted the underlying principles to maximize the efficiencies and qualities in the labs.
The new Henry Ford Production system has resulted in:
- A cultural transformation from employees merely showing up to work to that of empowered staff enthusiastically doing the work better each day.
- The Surgical Pathology Laboratory being the first in the world to develop and implement new technology of bar code-specified work processes to standardize work, reduce specimen identification and work product defects.
- Hundreds of improvements are being implemented each year, making small but effective improvements to the quality and timeliness of care.
We know from the changes that have already been brought about that far greater changes are to come, and that therefore we are not performing a single operation as well as it ought to be performed. – Henry Ford
