Management in health care
  • 2020 № 10 Possibilities of application of the toolkit for independent assessment of the quality of service providing conditions by medical organizations for analysis of effectiveness of system transformations at the ambulatory stage

    Successful achievement of goals of the national projects «Healthcare» and «Demography» is impossible without the
    active participation of subjects of the Russian Federation. At the same time, choice of optimal tools for assessing the transformations carried out on a regional scale is of particular importance. The aim of the study was to analyze the effectiveness of implementation of the Standard for the organization of outpatient care in the Tomsk region using tools for independent assessment of the quality of conditions for the provision of services by medical organizations. The results of the questionnaire survey of patients of medical organizations participating in the implementation of the project were analyzed before (2018, 896 patients from 18 medical organizations) and after (2019, 252 patients from 5 medical organizations) implementation of its main activities using the Questionnaire approved by the Ministry of Health of Russia. The informativeness of the questions of the questionnaire used to assess the effectiveness of a regional project depended on their nature. It is shown that the results of a questionnaire survey on issues affecting technical aspects of the process of receiving services (waiting times for an appointment with a doctor, research) should be interpreted comprehensively in combination with an assessment of technological indicators and data on the resource availability of the processes under study. Questions related to various aspects of patient satisfaction with the services received and the conditions for their provision showed positive dynamics in a number of parameters, indicating the effectiveness of the project implementation. The questions that concretize the object of satisfaction
    or dissatisfaction, in comparison with the questions involving an integrated assessment of the institution, were of great
    information content. The survey data obtained in the course of an independent assessment of the quality of the conditions for the provision of services in medical organizations can become an effective tool for an integrated assessment of the implementation of regional projects, allowing to determine the correctness of the selected directions of systemic transformations.

    Authors: Shibalkov I. P. [8] Boykov V. A. [7] Kobyakova O. S. [16] Deev I. A. [9] Baranovskaya S. V. [4] Suvorova T. A. [3] Protasova L. M. [2]

    Tags: effectiveness assessment1 independent quality assessment3 patient satisfaction7 questionnaire survey3

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  • Management in healthcare
  • 2022 № 5 Review of lean practices in clinical laboratories

    The main role of clinical laboratory diagnostics is to obtain reliable, reproducible and timely results that help to make the right clinical decisions. As the literature review shows, there are a number of common problems for many clinical laboratories, such as: long turnaround times, high laboratory costs for consumables, insufficient level of satisfaction with quality of services received by patients and high number of complaints. The use of lean manufacturing can be one way of solving these problems.
    Purpose of the study is to summarize and analyze the literature regarding the application of lean manufacturing in clinical laboratories.
    Materials and methods. A literature review was performed using the following abstract databases: Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed, ScienceDirect, Mendeley, and NCBI. The depth of the search according to the time parameter had no limitations. The following keywords were used as search markers: “lean management”, “lean thinking”, “lean six sigma”, “lean tools”, “healthcare”, “health services”, “clinical laboratory”. More than 100 publications were analyzed, from which 28 most representative studies were selected.
    Results. The implementation of lean production methods provides a reduction in turnaround time, costs and errors in the clinical laboratory, reduces the contamination of biological material at the preanalytical stage and reduces waiting time for services and, as a consequence, reduces the number of patient complaints.
    Conclusion. The above results indicate that lean production methods can be used in laboratories to solve frequently occurring problems and demonstrate the effectiveness of their application in clinical laboratories.

    Authors: Shibalkov I. P. [8] Boykov V. A. [7] Kobyakova O. S. [16] Deev I. A. [9] Baranovskaya S. V. [4] Babeshina M. A. [2] Pavlova K. A. [1] Perfilyeva D. Yu. [1]

    Tags: clinical laboratory2 cost reduction1 lean  production6 patient satisfaction7 turnaround time (tat)1

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  • 2021 № 1 Applying lean manufacturing technologies to optimize ambulance operations amid the spread of COVID‑19

    The pandemic of new coronavirus infection COVID‑19 has become a serious challenge for the national health
    systems, including Russia, setting ambitious goals aimed at preventing the spread of infection and maintaining the availability of medical care in environment of increasing pressure. The aim of the study was to develop, based on the principles of lean production, a set of measures to increase the availability of emergency medical services for patients diagnosed with or suspected of a new coronavirus infection COVID‑19 in the Tomsk Region. Standard tools of lean manufacturing are applied to the work process of the admission department of the respiratory center in RSBHI «Medical sanitary station № 2». As a result of implementation of target state map, which provides for the optimization of process of transferring a patient diagnosed or suspected of a new coronavirus infection COVID‑19 to admission department, a positive dynamics of local (5.4 times increase in the proportion of calls completed within 15 minutes after the patient was delivered to the admission department) and system (an increase of 1.3 times in the proportion of calls with the time the ambulance team reaches the patient within 20 minutes) indicators of the ambulance service was achieved. The study confirms the effectiveness of lean manufacturing tools for optimizing the work of ambulance and allows us to recommend them for use in a pandemic and other risks of emergency.

    Authors: Shibalkov I. P. [8] Boykov V. A. [7] Kobyakova O. S. [16] Deev I. A. [9] Taranov A. A. [2] Baranovskaya S. V. [4] Suvorova T. A. [3] Babeshina M. A. [2] Masunov V. N. [1] Milkevich M. N. [1] Rodionov N. V. [1]

    Tags: covid-19 pandemic6 emergency medical services2 lean  production6 patient routing1 respiratory center1

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  • Social aspects of health
  • 2020 № 8 Satisfaction of patients as an indicator of the effectiveness of organizational models of providing medical care in the outpatient sector

    The object of the study is patient satisfaction with the medical care provided as a potential tool for evaluating the effectiveness of organizational changes in the outpatient unit. The patient-oriented approach is becoming more and more widespread in the world and domestic health care, so it is also necessary to take into account the opinion of the recipients of medical care in order to evaluate the ongoing changes. The purpose of the study was to test the developed online patient satisfaction assessment service TesMed in the implementation of systemic organizational changes in the outpatient section of the Tomsk region (united in one document – the Standard for organizing outpatient care in the Tomsk region). Patients were able to use the smartphone functionality to identify the medical organization and put a rating on a five-point scale. If the patient scored less than five points, the app asked them to select a reason for dissatisfaction from the list. The data of 2898 forms were analyzed. By the time of the beginning of noticeable
    changes for visitors of polyclinics (changing the format of the reception area, staff jobs, registry, formation of corporate culture), the share of visitors who rated the work of a medical organization by five points was 57.78%. After a month of project implementation, this parameter increased to 85.79% and did not fall below 72% until the end of 2019. The analysis of factors affecting negative ratings showed that the structure of reasons for their decline has not changed significantly. The study showed that the use of assessment methods used in the provision of medical care organizational models based on the opinion of patients, along with standard performance indicators, contributes to improving the effectiveness of interaction between medical organizations and patients.

    Authors: Shibalkov I. P. [8] Boykov V. A. [7] Kobyakova O. S. [16] Deev I. A. [9] Baranovskaya S. V. [4] Suvorova T. A. [3] Protasova L. M. [2] Shnaider G. V. [1]

    Tags: patient-orientation6 satisfaction with medical care3 standardization of medical care1 “lean manufacturing”3

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