Milton Keynes Hospital Trust

A Lean Approach to Capacity Planning at Milton Keynes Hospital Trust

Milton Keynes Hospital NHS Foundation Trust provides a broad range of general medical and surgical services, including Accident & Emergency, for over 300,000 people every year.

Milton Keynes Hospital Imaging Services supports both the trust and the wider General Practitioner community.

Solution

After a significant growth in demand for its services, rising 14% from the previous year, and with a forecast of 5% year on year growth over the next three years, the Imaging department were finding capacity an increasingly demanding issue.

LSC Group was contracted to undertake a Lean project to identify and address the problems hindering capacity planning within the Ultrasound section.

After undertaking a series of interviews and analysis of key performance data, LSC Group ran a series of workshops to facilitate an Improvement programme. The event involved staff from across the Trust, and was designed to assist in the identification of root causes affecting the department's capacity as well as areas for improvement.

Benefits

Through the implementation of Lean techniques LSC Group enabled the Trust to identify a number of improvement areas.

Specific benefits included:

• 10% increase in day time capacity
• 30% increase in overtime capacity
• Improvement of working dynamics across the department
• Behavioural awareness amongst team of wider impacts of not following the process

This project provided the Imaging team with a platform for future improvement projects and a focus for continuous development.

LSC Group identified a number of other follow-on improvement projects which, if implemented, would enable the Trust to truly maximise the value of adopting a Lean approach.