OTTUMWA, IA – When Simpler Healthcare set out to reduce waste and inefficiency in America’s healthcare system, officials looked to a rather unorthodox source for inspiration: The automotive industry.

Specifically, Simpler adopted the production system of Japanese carmaker Toyota, long known as a benchmark of efficiency. And since 2003, Simpler Healthcare’s “lean management” techniques have been embraced by more than 75 healthcare provider networks in the country.

“We believe in true enterprise transformation,” said Mike Chamberlain, general manager of Simpler Healthcare and president of Simple North America, which launched as a consulting firm in 1996. “In healthcare, you have to understand that the patient is the one that determines value, even though there are many competing interests. … It all comes down to leadership and involvement.”

Simpler works with healthcare providers by identifying “rapid improvement events,” or specific care pathways that can be improved. Simpler consultants, or “senseis,” are assigned to work with teams of employees – including management – to identify how a specific process can be modified to reduce waste and improve the patient’s experience.

“Number one, there has to be a win for the patient,” said Chamberlain. “Number two, there has to be a win for the clinician or physicians, and number three, there has to be a win for the administration.”

One of Simpler’s first healthcare clients was ThedaCare, a Wisconsin-based healthcare group consisting of four hospitals and 5,300 employees. Tim Olson, ThedaCare’s chef financial officer, said the system had been “looking for a process to accelerate the improvement of care and save money as well.” He said the system first used lean management to reduce accounts receivable from 60 days to roughly 40, a process that equates to about $30 million saved through reduced billing efforts.

Since then, ThedaCare has renamed the process the ‘ThedaCare Improvement System” and used it in more than a dozen instances. In one case, in trying to come up with a collaborative care model for a new wing, hospital officials used the empty space in a nearby bankrupt mall to try out different room designs.

“We basically created the process around the capital,” he said.

Olson said the ThedaCare Improvement System requires everyone, from management on down, to take a good, long look at what they do and look for ways to do it better.

“Everywhere you go, you’re going to find defects,” he pointed out. “You make adjustments, find more defects and move on. It’s out-of-the-box thinking – spending six months in a vacant mall to create a new collaborative care model – but we’ve got a big toolbox to work with.”

Kim Barnas, ThedaCare’s vice president of radiation oncology, said the process was used in her department about six years ago, when the system brought in new cyberknife technology. She said staff mapped out how the technology would improve the patient experience as well as the staff’s workflow.

“In the beginning, as with any new program, your staff thinks it’s the flavor of the month and they don’t buy into it completely,” she said. ‘Now we have people using lean tools everyday in their work without encouragement.”