One of the serious hidden issues in healthcare is the amount of time spent fixing system problems and failures. This is time taken away from providing safer and more focused patient care.

In 2004 the Freemason’s Hospital established the WorkWise project. The objective was to identify and then realise process and quality improvement opportunities in The Patient Journey – the process representing the pathway from entry to hospital to discharge. To date this project has enabled us to reduce time wasted by approximately 650 hours per month.

The project was operated in collaboration between Freemasons Hospital staff and Bevington Consulting personnel, using a process improvement methodology known as XeP3. This is a simple, fast and effective system for driving quality improvement and change.

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There's more to tracking business success than measuring an organisation's KPIs - as the staff at Mitcham Private Hospital discovered with the help of Bevington Consulting.

The Business Improvement Project at Mitcham Private Hospital is Victoria was conducted in conjunction with Bevington Consulting, using the hospital's methodology. The outcome of the project has been an increase in earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITA) of over 38% in an 18-month period.

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A recent USA Industrial Week article (1/4/04) was interestingly called "Faster But Not better". The article came up with the 2003 census findings that improved manufacturing times don't always result in comparable cost reductions. The census found that approximately 73% of plants had reduced manufacturing cycle times (start of production to completion of product), and 71.6% of plants reduced customer lead time (order entry to shipment) over the last three years. Yet with all the emphasis on speed, less than half of the plants (49.5%) increased total inventory turn rates.

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