related projects
Lean Reviews
Client: Christie Hospital
Project Overview
The Christie provides chemotherapy treatment to some 40,000 patients and the Trust identified significant waste within the chemotherapy treatment process.
As a result of a lean review of chemotherapy treatment, the pharmacy elements of the patient pathway required further attention if the benefits of the initial review were to be realised: patient waiting times were unacceptable; the Trust was dispensing and bearing the cost of non chemotherapy related drugs and of additional manning of the dispensary.
In addition, patient files in the clinical preparation section of outpatients were often unavailable until late the day before clinic, resulting in major ‘over production’ of staff time, causing longer patient waiting times.
CPC’s Role
CPC was tasked with providing new, Lean processes upon which a new £35m chemotherapy treatment centre could be designed and built and ensuring that the chemotherapy service and clinical trials service operate in a consistent manner, sharing resources, skills and expertise to improve the ‘patient pathway’.
By mapping current processes, streamlining and improving the patient pathway and identifying and eliminating all areas of waste CPC achieved the following benefits for the Christie:
- Waste identified in the sum of £1.35m, providing a return on investment in excess of 10:1 for the client
- A new, integrated way of working for the chemotherapy and clinical trials services
- Fully engaged clinicians, operational managers and staff, all of whom are driving change based on a comprehensive change programme linked to key performance indicators
- A streamlined patient pathway and much improved patient experience, with some 29 steps taken out of the treatment process alone, and
- A unique design for a chemotherapy treatment centre, which is fully lean compliant
