Mistake-proofing and its relation to process management

One of my colleagues at HealthLeaders Media, Cheryl Clark, wrote this columnyesterday about making things fail-proof–anything really. She starts out by giving the example of how her fancy refrigerator beeps when the doors have been open for too long, reminding owners to shut the doors. She used that analogy to draw some comparisons to many of the mistake-proofing devices in healthcare, and how we are now really are coming into the age of really predicting how an error might occur and designing systems better to prevent those errors.

I’ve been reading up a lot lately on process management and even when speaking with people in the healthcare industry, there seems to be a lot of momentum behind the Lean and Six Sigma, the notion of ridding our systems of waste if we truly want them to succeed–and be the easiest and most logical way of doing things. Designing processes so that they are “mistake-proof” certainly ties in.

I suggest reading her column, it’s a good one. Do you see a larger waste reduction and process improvement effort taking place at your facility?