Operations Management in a Seattle Hospital

摘要

Swedish Medical Center (SMC), established in 1910, is the largest, most comprehensive health, care organization in the Pacific Northwest. Swedish, located in Seattle, Washington, is a nonprofit, 860-bed acute care hospital comprised of two campuses―one 697-bed facility and a smaller 163-bed facility, as well as a home health and hospice program. In the course of a continuous process improvement program, several teams independently identified patient transfers as a potential area of improvement and cost savings. Previously, nurses and professional medical staff were executing about 50 percent of patient transfers. A cross-department team was formed to address the problem and draft a solution. Their recommendation is to centralize patient transportation by forming a new cost center, install and implement an optimized dispatching package, install and implement a hospitalwide internal communications package, and train users. Expected savings total $2,400,000. Actual implementation (post-test) begins on 5/3/99.