Employees no longer have to look to other institutions for shining examples of Operational Excellence. 'Because there's plenty of them right here!', explains Marja van Dieijen, chair of the Executive Board. Thanks to an intensive training programme, Operational Excellence has now become a familiar term and everybody at the hospital speaks the language. The knowledge gained has already been incorporated into scores of projects, many of which have achieved exceptional results.
Value Based Healthcare
As the Operational Excellence programme manager, Frits van Merode remains closely involved with developments to this very day. 'One important lesson learned in the initial stage is that the employees must want to take responsibility. That lays the foundations upon which we can build. In 2016, we started to adopt Value Based Health Care (VBHC), which really forces us to examine health care through the eyes of our patients and investigate what the care really does for them. Although Operational Excellence is also based on value for patients, VBHC really zooms in on this issue. It also makes it measurable. In other words, if you know what is good for the patient and what he/she thinks and wants, then you can tailor the process to optimally suit this. Operational Excellence puts the emphasis on continuous learning, which greatly facilitates innovation. However, by implementing Value Based Health Care, we want to achieve even more radical innovation, such as eHealth and robotization.”
Our journey
At the start of our journey in 2009, the ultimate goal was to become a process-oriented hospital that continually improves itself. Now, in 2018, we are significantly closer to realizing this goal.
Our book, entitled 'Our Journey towards Operational Excellence and Value Based Health Care', tells the story of our journey in greater detail, allowing everyone to learn from our experiences and insights.