Dynamic Capacity Management for Healthcare

During his 20+ year healthcare career, Pierce Story has dealt with complex systems redesign, operations improvement, and performance analysis throughout hospitals and health systems. Pierce brings years of experience, unique perspectives, and new concepts to chronic disease management, capacity management, patient care, and health system redesign. Having developed several new applications and toolsets for the analysis and redesign of key clinical operations and patient care capacity strategies, Pierce understands the needs of the industry and the failings of traditional solutions. His vision is a new way of managing the provision of healthcare in the United States.Pierce has a Masters Degree in Health Policy and Management from the Muskie School of Public Policy in Portland, Maine, and is trained in both Six Sigma and Lean methodologies. Pierce is also a Diplomate, Past President, and active member of the Society for Health Systems, a volunteer organization of over 900 healthcare performance improvement specialists and engineers. He is a member of the Leadership Council of the American Society for Quality’s Healthcare Division.

Pierce Story has added an important chapter to the growing body of literature on healthcare performance improvement. His theme of managing effectively to actual demand is compelling, and the contention that healthcare leaders should not be dogmatic about the methods or tools of continuous improvement is right on target.—Pat Hagan, President and COO, Seattle Children’s HospitalWhy does every healthcare improvement project we undertake fall short of our intended goals? We have tried all the techniques and tools of other industries and still cannot achieve the desired outcomes. Despite heroic efforts, patients wait – that is the end result. They wait everywhere – and costs, counted on a variety of scales, continue to mount. What element is missing? The answer is dynamic demand capacity matching and management. Within this book, you begin the journey of understanding how the protean interdependent relationships unique to healthcare delivery, each with their own variability, combine to form an intricate ballet that is actually predictable and manageable. This book is a must-read for anyone engaged in healthcare improvement, whether you work in a clinic, hospital, or healthcare system.—Keith Messner, MD, MBA, BSN , Emergency Physician, Healthcare Transformation Medical Director, Cape Fear Valley Health System. Fayetteville, North CarolinaHealthcare is facing a huge challenge in reforming delivery predicted on changes and incentives in payment. Without revamping dynamic delivery systems to reduce and to reallocate current costs, chaos and disruption will likely occur. We need the analytical tools and creative mindset outlined in this book to help guide us on the path to reform. Thanks for the knowledge and for the encouragement to get it done.—Mike Sack, CEO, Hallmark Health

• Prologue: Kenji’s Story. Preface: Blasphemy. Acknowledgments. Introduction. Variability: Killer of Capacity. Interdependencies. DCAMM Introduction. Predictive Analytics. Demand Components: The Emergency Department. Surgical Services and DCAMM Analytics. Up–Down–Up: Creating a Systems View from a Component Perspective. Capacity Patterns and Analytics for DCAMM. Dynamic Resource Allocations, Dynamic Standardization, and Workload Analytics. A Word on Mandated Nurse–Patient Ratios. Outlier Management and System Balance. Epilogue: Kenji’s Story (Continued).