Improvements resulted in potential for $1.4 million in annual revenue
Radia Inc., a large radiology and vascular surgery
practice in the Pacific Northwest, wanted to improve
efficiencies at one center that was falling behind other
Radia sites. The center launched a project that led to
a 50 percent improvement in the number of on-time
MRI scans, exceeding the project’s original goal. The
improvement created the potential for more than
$1.4 million in annualized incremental revenue, while
maintaining optimal patient safety and quality of care.
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Define
Evergreen Radia Imaging Center is an outpatient radiology
center that provides MRI scanning for referring
physicians. After a second, more sophisticated 3-tesla (3T)
magnet was added, the number of daily scans performed
per technologist dropped 20 percent below the bestperforming
Radia imaging center and 8 percent below
the industry benchmark…
Measure
After completing the high-level process flow, we used
SIPOC (suppliers, inputs, process, outputs, customers)
diagrams to begin understanding inputs and outputs for
each process phase. Mapping emphasized the complexity
of the process, especially the number of decisions at prescan
and scan…
Analyze
The team went through two FMEA (failure mode and
effects analysis) exercises. First, in the Measure phase, we
used the traditional FMEA process to identify problems
that could occur. Then, after some discussion, we decided
to do a second FMEA to look at problems that did occur…
Control
We used a 2-sample t-test to statistically validate that
our changes to the process did indeed result in significant
improvement in the primary metric of appointment-toscan
time. The mean time was reduced from 7.5 minutes
to -1.1 minutes, which essentially meant that, on average,
we were able to start scans early. Additionally, variation in
the metric was reduced – the range in appointment-toscan
time went from 152 minutes to 70 minutes…
Author
Karole Sherlock, a certified Black Belt, is the manager of
process improvement for Radia, the largest radiology practice
in the Pacific Northwest. Sherlock has more than 20 years of
experience in laboratory medicine and operations management,
and more than 10 years leading medical improvement
and communication initiatives…
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