Generally, the Palestinian healthcare industry and specially the emerging hospitals in Palestine suffer from several problems that impede their progress and affect their quality of providing services.
In this project we chose to target one of the Palestinian leading hospitals (An-Najah National University Teaching Hospital), since it is a non-governmental organization that provides services equally to the private and public, to implement the techniques and tools of industrial engineering with the purpose of improving the overall system.
The focus of our study was on the patient journey throughout the hospital, the operating rooms, the laboratory layout and the Joint Commission International (JCI) accreditation. Our main objective is to optimize the patient flow through using Lean tools such as: Flowcharts, Value Stream Maps, Communications Circles and A3 Problem Solving Reports. Concerning the operating rooms department, the Ishikawa Diagram was used to detect the root causes for some of the department’s problems. In addition, the laboratory is one of the essential stations which most of the patients go through. Therefore, we meant to improve its major problem which is the layout. Finally, targeting the quality and safety of the hospital, we studied the validity of the JCI accreditation implementation in the hospital.
As a result, after deeply understating the whole process and implementing the previously mentioned tools, firstly, we developed a reprocessed flow of patients that insures an average of 49.5% reduction of the non-value added time. Secondly, an operating rooms scheduling model and an SOP sample were developed. Thirdly, an improved layout with an increased efficiency of 4% was suggested. Lastly, an implementation plan for JCI accreditation was constructed.