Making new Belts
How a university medical center used LSS to improve quality and cut costs
The University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG) is the second largest hospital in the Netherlands and the largest employer in Northern Netherlands. It is the only level-one trauma center in this region and is licensed to perform all categories of transplants. UMCG’s 12,000 employees provide patient care and medical education, and perform cutting-edge scientific research focused on healthy and active aging.
In 2007, UMCG recognized that if it wanted to continue providing high-quality service to its patients and be recognized as a leader in medical education and research, it must improve and change its working processes. UMCG was facing a growing demand from an aging population, with a diminishing number of nurses, rises in medical materials and vast financial cuts from the Dutch government. It needed a solution to resolve its challenges while maintaining and improving its service delivery to patients, academia and research.
“Cost and quality of healthcare are two critical issues within our university medical center,” said UMCG CEO, Jos Aartsen. “Finding ways to improve quality and reduce costs are therefore the most important issues facing the medical profession as well as the public in general.” Laura de Jong, HR director, with years of commercial knowledge of process improvement, and the CFO, Henk Snapper, compiled a case to address the hospital’s challenges.
After some time, the UMCG board of directors was convinced of the benefits of starting a new process improvement program using lean Six Sigma (LSS). The scientific research base of LSS was determined to conform well with UMCG, even though historically LSS was an industry-specific method. The Institute for Business and Industrial Statistics of the University of Amsterdam (IBIS UvA) was invited to meet the UMCG board in June 2007. UMCG hoped that IBIS UvA’s knowledge of and experience implementing LSS in industry, services and healthcare through a learning and development approach would add value to UMCG and positively affect the challenges it was facing. Furthermore, the academic profile
