“Curmudge, it’s frustrating. We’re working our heads off spreading the Lean culture throughout Affinity, but the hospital on the other side of town seems to get most of the publicity. If one reads the health care blogs, especially Mark Graban’s LeanBlog, you’d think our competition is the only hospital in Appleton.”
“As I mentioned in our last discussion, Jaded Julie, competition between hospitals is a bit different than between manufacturers. For readers who are not local, let’s begin with some geography and history.”
“Go ahead, Old Guy, but I suspect you’ll take the scenic route in answering my concerns.”
“The Fox River flows from west to east, dividing Appleton into the North Side and the South Side. Over 100 years ago this distinction was fairly critical because the North Side was populated mainly by Protestants and the South Side by Catholics. It is said that on Sundays, the teetotaling Methodists sat on the north bank watching the Catholics on the south bank drink beer. Of course, that’s where the brewery was located.”
“So when our Founding Sisters arrived over 100 years ago, they established St. Elizabeth Hospital amid the Catholic population on the South Side.”
“That’s it, Julie. As time passed, the North Side folks grew tired of driving through the Flats and crossing the narrow, low-level bridges (Oneida St., Lawe St., and John St.) to get to St. E’s. By 1958 the Appleton business leaders had raised enough money to open Appleton Memorial Hospital on the North Side. Of course by then, everyone lived everywhere; and cultural differences between North Side and South Side were no longer meaningful. As they say, the rest is history.”
“But it’s not the rest, Curmudge. What about Lean?”
“Well, we became Affinity, and they became ThedaCare. They began their Lean journey a couple of years before we did. As Civil War General Nathan Bedford Forrest advised, ‘git thar fust with the most,’ and ThedaCare did. The Lean movement in health care needed early success stories, and they were provided by Virginia Mason Medical Center and ThedaCare.”
“If that is our history, where are we now?”
“As I understand it, we both have dynamic Lean efforts and excellent equipment and facilities. At Affinity we are seeking an advantage in quality of service through Personalized Care.”
“So what, Curmudge, is the ‘twice-blessed’ stuff in the title of today’s discussion?”
“Over the years, many people in Appleton have been patients of specialists and primary care physicians who later became affiliated with Affinity or ThedaCare. If we are still seeing them, we might end up in either of the two Appleton hospitals. Both should provide excellent care, so we are indeed twice blessed.”
“I don’t advocate getting sick anywhere; but if it’s going to occur, Appleton is not a bad place for it to happen.”
“Julie, as I described on April 23, 2009, it’s surely better here than in Prague, Czech Republic.”
Affinity’s Kaizen Curmudgeon
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About Me
Kaizen is a Japanese word meaning change for the better. A curmudgeon is a crusty, irascible, cantankerous old person. The Kaizen Curmudgeon blog consists principally of conversations between the Curmudgeon and Jaded Julie. Their topic is Lean (the Toyota Production System) and its applications in health care. We attempt to depict Curmudgeon as the resident Old Guy who possesses some degree of perspicacity and is not nearly as grouchy as the formal definition of curmudgeon suggests. As her name implies, Jaded Julie is a nurse who has “had it up to here” with waste and inefficiency. She is unsophisticated, somewhat feisty, and does not appreciate having to learn the Japanese terminology of Lean. Of course, both the Kaizen Curmudgeon and Jaded Julie are fictional. The author of Kaizen Curmudgeon is a retired Associate Professor of Chemistry who has been a volunteer in health care since 2004.
1 comment:
Deftly finessed, Curmudge!
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