How Virginia Mason Was Saved.
PSA System Improves Patient Safety
Virginia Mason used VMPS to develop a Patient Safety Alert (PSA) system. It requires all staff that encounter a situation likely to harm a patient to make an immediate report and cease any activity that could cause further harm. If the safety of a patient is indeed at risk, an investigation is immediately launched to correct the problem. Patient safety at Virginia Mason has increased and professional liability claims have dropped.
One-Stop Care for Patients with Cancer
Using VMPS, the Floyd & Delores Jones Cancer Institute at Virginia Mason was redesigned with a laboratory and pharmacy inside, eliminating the need for patients to travel throughout the hospital for chemotherapy. Now all cancer services are brought directly to the patient in his or her private treatment room. For each patient, this reduced the length of a chemotherapy visit from 10 hours to two hours and saved about 500 feet of walking at each visit.
Getting Back to Nursing
In most hospitals, nurses spend about 35 percent of their time in direct patient care. With VMPS, VM nursing teams increased that time to 90 percent. Instead of caring for patients throughout a unit, nurses work as a team with a patient-care technician in "cells" — groups of rooms located near each other. The cell model allows nurses to monitor patients and quickly attend to their needs. Also, the most commonly used supplies for each unit were moved to patient rooms so nurses reduced walking back and forth to get supplies. The number of steps nurses walked decreased from 10,000 per day to 1,200 per day.
Faster Revenue Cycle
VMPS principles are used in all areas of the organization, not just in clinical settings. The Finance Department began using VMPS to address outstanding revenue (revenue owed to the organization that had not been paid in a timely