Wake-Up Call
Lean Hospital Group & Leonardo Group Americas, LLC
November 23, 2009
American health care providers and administrators should take a careful look at Geeta Anand’s article in the November 21, 2009 Wall Street Journal: “The Henry Ford of Heart Surgery.” Dr. Devi Sheeti of India, who was personal physician to Mother Teresa, has built a surgical practice which provides open-heart surgical care to many thousands of patients yearly, at an average cost of $2,000 per case, compared to American rates ranging from $20,000 to $100,000.
How can this be? Think Henry Ford, particularly early in his career, who focused on standardization, volume, and continuous process improvements. By driving down the cost curve, Ford dramatically increased the accessibility of his product while improving its reliability. Dr. Sheeti’s surgical team perform enough specialized procedures that they get very, very good at them, according to Jack Lewin, chief executive of the American College of Cardiology, who has visited Dr. Sheeti’s hospital. Dr. Sheeti’s medical outcomes are well within comparative ranges, and may be understated, given that many of his patients come from high-risk backgrounds.
Dr. Sheeti makes a further comment relating medicine and the auto industry. As Detroit’s Big Three, protected from meaningful competition for several decades following World War II, grew bloated and complacent, “Japanese companies reinvented the process of making cars. That’s what we’re doing in health care.”
He summarizes perfectly the misdirection of so much effort, and money, in American health care: “What health care needs is process innovation, not product innovation.” Peter Pronovost, M.D., the Johns Hopkins physician who has used medical checklists to standardize procedures, eliminate errors and reduce infections, agrees: “The fundamental problem with the quality of American medicine is that we’ve failed to view the delivery of health care as a science.”
So, what’s the next step for Dr. Sheeti and his burgeoning practice? Plans are underway to build a 1,000-bed hospital in the Cayman Islands – just an hour away from Miami by air. That’s right – a powerful new competitor for American cardiac care, right on our doorstep.
So, there’s the wake-up call. America prides itself on innovation, creativity and technology. It’s time now to apply those competitive strengths where they’re needed most – in process innovation. That, of course, is what Lean is all about.
Reference:
Geeta Anand, “The Henry Ford of Heart Surgery”, The Wall Street Journal, November 21-22, 2009.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125875892887958111.html