Standards

Today's theme is standardized work. What is a standard? It is a basis for comparison. The important thing to remember is that without a standard there can be no improvement. This is because we have nothing to compare the improvement against.

Healthcare as an industry is very weak on following standards. Many activities are optional, or of guideline in nature. This generates a lot of waste caused by variation in process. The Mayo Clinic reported in a research project that ~50% of the wastes in their health system were caused by an unassignable variance in physician practice. The Institute of Medicine reports that only 54% of all patients are managed according to the best evidence. This means that almost half of all patients are not getting the highest quality, safest care.

Can every action be guided by a standard? If we new the source of all problems, my answer would be yes. However, since this is sometimes extremely difficult and expensive to discover we would be unwise in not using some combination of heuristics and judgement.

However, at the end of the day, 80% of all our work activity should be following a standard. As you look around your work areas, how many items can you identify that are governed by a standard? I would challenge you that it is no where near 80%.

If you are having problems, a great place to start is creating a standard as a platform from which to improve.

Ron

www.breakthroughhorizons.com