Deaconess glover hospital case

For the exclusive use of A. Qumosani, 2017. 9-601-022 REV: AUGUST 25, 2005 STEVEN J. SPEAR JOHN KENAGY, M.D. Deaconess-Glover Hospital (A) Hospitals are filled with contradictions. You come to them because you’re sick and need care, but hospitals are places where infections, uncertainty, and errors might actually worsen your condition. Yet, miracles happen so routinely that we’ve come to expect them. Broken bodies are fixed, illnesses are cured, and spirits are repaired because of the hospitals’ caregivers. Unlike many business organizations, hospitals don’t wrestle with the problem of an uncommitted workforce. You will never see a more motivated group: nurses, doctors, technicians, and administrators. They are infused with and exude a single-minded desire to comfort and heal, above all else.1 — Paul O’Neill, Chairman, Alcoa Chairman, Working Together Healthcare Initiative of Western Pennsylvania Since August 1999, John Carter, a vascular surgeon, had been working with John Dalton, president of Needham, Massachusetts-based Deaconess-Glover Hospital (DGH); Julie Bonenfant, DGH’s vice president for patient services; and members of the hospital’s staff (see Exhibit 1 for DGH’s organizational chart). They were seeking an appropriate location within the hospital where they could test the applicability of the Toyota Production System2 (TPS) to the health-care setting. The idea was that once a prototype model line or learning unit was tested for functionality and its benefits were verified, lessons from the learning unit could be taught throughout the rest of the hospital. The longer-term hope was that once benefits were verified within DGH, they could be applied within the CareGroup health-care system of which DGH was part (see Exhibit 2 for CareGroup’s organizational chart). Now, in November 1999, Carter was sharing his initial recommendation for the model line. As he waited in Dalton’s office for Bonenfant’s arrival, he mentally rehearsed his presentation of findings and supporting data and anxiously anticipated Dalton’s and Bonenfant’s reaction. The stakes were high for all concerned. Carter had a 20-year career as a vascular surgeon and as a surgical practice manager in Washington state. However, his experience as a patient proved to be an epiphany. While vacationing with his family, he chased his son up a tree, slipped on a branch, and fell, breaking the second cervical vertebra in his neck. As a practitioner, he had often wrestled with “the system” to ensure that his patients received the care they needed, when they needed it. As a patient, Carter found that the system was filled with people who were as highly committed to patient care as he was, if not more so. Time and again, nurses, doctors, aides, technicians, and administrators 1 Quote taken from e-mail correspondence, January 1999. 2 See S. Spear and K. Bowen, “Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System,” Harvard Business Review, September/October 1999.