Question

4. 1. What do you think were the underlying reasons for the performance problems that Virginia Mason Hospital was encountering in the early 2000s?

Answer 1

Explanation

Performance problem faced by Virginia Mason Hospital were due to the following reason.

1. Virginia Hospital has too many people involved in the process of treatment of patient which wasted a lot of time in referring the patient to the specialist doctor and execution of proper treatment proved to be inefficient.
2. Virginia Mason hospitals doctor has to cover a large distance by walking for reaching to patients at different rooms within the hospital which wasted a lot of time in walking instead of spending more time with patient.
3. Hospital also faced a problem of holding over stock of material which was kept with daily used items which increased inefficiency and hospitals inventory cost.
4. The radiation oncology department of hospital also was performing certain extra activities which could be easily eliminated to reduce the time for treatment of patient.

Therefore, it can be concluded that Virginia Mission Hospital has certain activities which hampered their efficiency and produced large problems for hospital which was later identified and Hospital overcame these problem by adopting "lean" production Technology which is used by Toyota Production department.