HEALTHCARE ACTIVATED.

GE Healthcare Partner’s innovative thinking and operational expertise have been an excellent complement to our team as we increase quality care while reducing costs. We were able to leverage their practical, no-nonsense approach to yield plans that have produced meaningful results.

More than just cost-cutting measures, we learned ways to get all of our staff deeply engaged in the shared goal to improve the way we work and to adapt our process and culture.

What it did and will continue to do is help us all get on the same page. Everybody had ideas about how much capacity we needed, and those ideas varied widely. This engagement took out all the guesswork and all the anecdotal information.

It became very clear early on that the Virtual ICU we already had in place to enable critical care expertise to rapidly reach a patient in a remote location would be a good tool to utilize in this crisis.

GE Healthcare very quickly helped us find areas where we could recognize savings to help fill our revenue gap.

The GE process helped us become better at monitoring transitions in care – the days/times that patients were entering and leaving a given unit and when staff from laboratory, pharmacy, and other departments were coming and going. It helped us understand patient assignment workloads, workflows, and work processes, with an orientation to maximizing the value of the nurses’ time on the units.

We knew we would have to get smarter about our existing processes and find areas where we could eliminate waste and become more efficient, not only to address current revenue challenges but to plan for the future.

If you draw something on paper, it’s one thing. Actually, seeing the lines of transport come to life really makes a difference.

GE was willing to work with us in a hybrid role so we could learn from them. They had expertise and the methodology in simulation that we were only beginning to accrue. Our industrial systems engineers took part in the data collection and used the methodologies and simulation tools, learning how we might apply them elsewhere.

One of the provocative findings from the GE analysis was that we were using highly skilled individuals for tasks that didn’t necessarily require that skill.

I liked the thoroughness. The simulation data made it very easy for me to create confidence in our board.

As a result of the strategic planning process from GE Healthcare, we know our market and our business significantly better than we ever have. We have financial models and levers that we use to drive our performance. We have clear strategies with action plans for all of our divisions. Our capital spending is directly tied to our strategic programs and priorities.

Working with GE Healthcare Consulting, we’ve saved $35 million in Non -Labor costs. This makes SHS stronger and allows us to focus even more on what’s truly important—delivering the highest-quality care to our communities.

We have engaged our executive team in being part of process improvement work. We also have empowered our black belts and trained them in CAP and Work-Out. The combination of the two helps make them expert facilitators with a full tool bag for leading people through change initiatives.