30% Reduction in Average Length of Stay in just 38 days

Since the publication of Making Hospitals Work last summer we have become aware that several organisations are also convinced that improving door-to-door patient journeys and reducing length of stay (LoS) is the most promising route to improving overall performance in the current circumstances.

Earlier in the year, we sent an invitation to several acute organisations known to be working on the door-to-door patient journey, inviting them to join together to form a ‘door to door’ club where experiences both good and bad may be viewed and shared, an opportunity to work on one shared problem that if improved would elevate many problems. That of medical LoS

One of the first organisations to respond to this ‘call to action’ and start working with us seized the opportunity of employing the visual operational management processes described in ‘Making Hospitals Work’ and what a difference they’ve made!

At first they reported that it felt much better (in the morning they were coming in to large numbers of empty beds both in MAU and on the medical wards) and even their Trust data (in Excel with lots of pivot tables, graphs and colours) suggested an improvement

We always caution against declaring victory too early however and needed to confirm, statistically, that there had indeed been a significant change.

As a result we conducted a T-Test: looking for a p-value of less than 0.05 to confirm a statistical difference. The analysis showed that the p-value is 0.000 thereby confirming a statistically significant change.

Within just 38 days of implementation they had actually reduced their average medical LoS by 30% (along with a 25% reduction in the median) whilst significantly reducing the variation in LoS.

Below are their LoS results presented in some meaningful ways that way we like to view them:

LoS for patients admitted prior to the implementation V’s that of patients admitted on or post implementation.

Satisfied that there was a proven, significant, change the team were now in a position to reveal this news to their executive team.

You can imagine the interest generated, when they did so.
And they acknowledge that his is just the start of their journey in following the roadmap featured in ‘Making Hospitals Work’.

However, the scientific approaches already adopted by this organisation have been making real, and dramatic, improvements in their Length of Stay performance. We would welcome any comments or questions regarding your approach to tackling LoS and the impact that it is having.

May we also take this opportunity to thank Tania, Maureen, Eileen, Colin and the team for holding their nerve, believing in this approach and their considerable effort in achieving this remarkable result.