Quality and Safety Save Healthcare by Saving Costs-Slide Deck: Quality and Safety Save Healthcare by Saving Costs

Slide Deck: Quality and Safety Save Healthcare by Saving Costs

Pdf Summary

The document outlines Lifespan’s system-wide “Lean Waste Walk Workout” initiative, presented by Nidia Williams (VP, Quality & Safety), aimed at reducing non–value-added work to improve quality, safety, patient experience, and financial performance. Lifespan, Rhode Island’s largest health system and private employer, organized quality and safety leadership through site executive dyads (CNO–CMO), system directors by quality function, and a centralized analytics team.<br /><br />The program is framed around the scale of waste in U.S. healthcare (estimated $750–$935B annually) and major categories of wasteful spending (administrative complexity, pricing failure, failures of care delivery and coordination, overtreatment/low-value care, and fraud/abuse). Waste is defined as any activity or resource that does not add value from the customer/patient perspective. Value-added work is what patients want, that changes the “product,” and is done right the first time.<br /><br />Participants learn to identify common waste types such as defects, overcapacity, waiting, unclear processes, transportation, excess inventory, unnecessary motion, and excess processing. The initiative uses Lean and Six Sigma tools (e.g., process flowcharting, brainstorming, SIPOC, poka-yoke) and “change concepts” such as standardization, reducing handoffs, removing bottlenecks, matching staffing to demand, eliminating unused steps, and using constraints/reminders.<br /><br />Deployment included a two-hour training for all department leaders and 1–2 hour team-based waste workout exercises in every department. A key rule was that savings had to come from new changes only (no double counting), and only annualized hard-dollar savings were claimed. Savings were tracked weekly, reviewed by finance, and tied to budget reality. The target was $4M in hard-dollar savings, with $7.72M identified. Success factors emphasized accountability, sharing wins, hard-wiring changes, and sustained top-down commitment toward high reliability and “eliminating waste to fund growth.”

Keywords

Lifespan Lean Waste Walk Workout

Nidia Williams VP Quality & Safety

healthcare waste reduction

non-value-added work elimination

Lean Six Sigma tools

waste types defects waiting motion inventory

process improvement SIPOC poka-yoke flowcharting

standardization and handoff reduction

hard-dollar savings tracking finance review

high reliability patient safety quality improvement