Rapid cancer diagnostics at VU University medical center
Health care processes, much like regular industrial processes, are characterized by long waiting times compared to the processing times. For reasons of competition and patient safety health care institutions try to reduce the time that processes take to finish. This particular project is concerned with cancer diagnostics in the VU University medical center. For all different cancer types (more than 20) the goal was to reduce time between first patient visit and treatment plan, if possible to less than 2 working days. Thanks to ACBA expertise a model for improvement was developed that could be used to implement rapid cancer diagnostics. This model focused on those departments that are central to cancer diagnostics (radiology, pathology) and on redesigning the "medical pathways" around these departments. This lead to an considerable reduction in time to diagnosis for most cancer types.
Keywords
Health care operations management, logistics
Branches/Industries
Health care
Company
VU University medical center, Amsterdam
