As mentioned in Monday's post with Podcast #131 (Paul Borawski, CEO of the American Society for Quality), ASQ had a contest where members could submit videos about the impact of Quality on their careers and lives. The page for their “YouQ” contest is hosted within Facebook, which means many of you won't be able to view it, unfortunately (of course, YouTube is sadly blocked for many readers… but that internet blocking is a different story – see Paul Levy's post on this).
One video, in particularly, stood out to me – featuring Brian Hudson from Franciscan St. Elizabeth Health (part of the larger Franciscan healthcare organization my Healthcare Kaizen co-author Joe Swartz works for, also in Indiana).
In the video, Hudson talks about his Lean and Six Sigma work, including the work involved in improving their “door to balloon” time for patients with chest pain and “Code STEMI” heart attacks.
Hudson then had his own bout with chest pain… and the excellent processes and flow at his own hospital made a huge difference in saving his life and leading to a recovery, as seen in the video.
Here is the video, as shown on YouTube:
From the YouTube page:
In the summer of 2007, Brian's top priority was reducing the “door-to-balloon” time for heart-attack patients at Franciscan St. Elizabeth Health. A fast “door-to-balloon” time — from arrival at a hospital to when blocked arteries are cleared — can mean the difference between life and death for a heart attack patient.
When Brian suffered his own heart attack, he felt the urgency in every tick of the clock. It was an out-of-nowhere shock for this physically active 40-year-old with no history of smoking, diabetes, high blood pressure or cholesterol, or family heart problems. The blockage pulled from Brian's body could fit on a dime but was enough to completely block his coronary artery.
This is incredibly powerful stuff! Thanks to Brian, Franciscan, and ASQ for sharing.
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Thanks for sharing my story with your community. It was truly amazing to be a “customer” of the process that our improvement teams impacted just a short time earlier. I led several kaizen events, benchmarked processes, and did a lot of data analysis to identify and improve parts of the process that had variation and waste.
I wanted to share the story with ASQ to show that lean and six sigma improvements apply in healthcare and to spread the word about the prevalence of heart disease, and how important it is to know the risk factors and signs/symptoms.