Virginia Mason healthcare facility and Toyota Production system ..

I was giving a reading assignment for my fourth sem MBA Operations students in Lean Operations when I chanced upon an interesting reading material in the Operations management book by William J Stevenson on the Virginia Mason hospital in Seattle, Washington, USA. In 2021 it merged with CHI Franciscan to form Virginia Mason Franciscan Health. It was the first time I was reading of a healthcare facility taking up the Toyota production system that was used to produce cars, to improve the quality of healthcare in the healthcare sector.

Virginia Mason Hospital was founded in 1920 in Seattle, Washington (the place where Boeing planes are assembled in NW US) and continues as one of the prominent private no-profit healthcare facility in that state. Virginia Mason hospital has been recognised all throughout the one hundred and two years of it's existence to be the leader in bringing healthcare innovations in the healthcare sector.

Virginia Mason, ranked at #40 among the best hospitals in US, has been the leader in bringing the concept of team medicine in healthcare, where instead of each physician working independently, they brought the concept of team medicine, where the team of doctors would collaborate and find effective solutions of healthcare problems and issues

• In 1923, they were the first to introduce Insulin in treatment of diabetes, introduce Electro Cardio gram(ECG) 
  
• 1949 - allowing fathers in delivery rooms
• 1956 - VM Research Centre which encouraged everyone to ask questions, so that the next time, these questions are answered and forms the basis for its growth and development. That year also saw midwifery program being introduced in the hospital.
• 1980 saw the first insulin pump being used in the hospital, the first cochlear transplant in the ear being carried out. That year also saw the identification of genetic markers for Rheumatoid arthritis
• 1990 saw a skilled nursing support facility for people with aids opening up. Even though it had the risk of infection and reputational damage, the Bailey Bouchet centre has been one of the corner stones of VM healthcare facility
• 90s also saw the mobile mammography unit starting and the 1000th kidney transplant being done there. 90s also saw the first robot assisted prostatectomy surgery and the corona artery bypass surgery conducted there
  
• 1992 saw the VM production sytem improve the safety and quality of healthcare, while reducing the waste and costs from Toyota.

Organising annual innovation fairs to promote innovation, building things themselves to solve problems, an example is the therapy car which helps patients after knee cap replacement surgery to get onto a vehicle after their hospital stay to go home.

The suggestion scheme of Kaizen, to help make things better for the doctor, hospital and patients daily has benefited VM to offer world class healthcare to the people of Washington state. The spirit of innovation, commitment to quality and safety, an undiluted focus on opatients as the centre of everything theu do has taken Virginia Nason hospital to the heights it has reached now. 

Thanks to the Toyota Production system. 

George..