Chasing Yokoten at Cleveland Clinic with Tony Blamer
Aug 17, 2023
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Tony Blamer, Senior Director of Continuous Improvement at the Cleveland Clinic, discusses the importance of empathy and understanding in applying improvement principles in healthcare. The podcast also explores the value of a decentralized model in healthcare and highlights success stories in reducing stroke care time and adopting new applications for better organization.
Yokoten refers to deploying improvement concepts and ideas horizontally across an organization, facilitating the spread of best practices.
Cleveland Clinic employs a decentralized continuous improvement team structure, combining standard processes and tailored engagement to spread improvement practices.
Deep dives
Chasing Yolkatin: Deploying Concepts and Ideas Horizontally
In this episode, Tony Blamer from Cleveland Clinic discusses the concept of Yolkatin, which refers to deploying concepts and ideas horizontally across a company. Tony shares his background in manufacturing and transition to healthcare. The main challenge in spreading improvement practices in healthcare is the need for empathy and the recognition that one size does not fit all. Cleveland Clinic employs a decentralized continuous improvement team structure, combining standard processes and tailored engagement to spread improvement practices. They use one-pagers to capture the value of improvement activities, which are then shared during monthly impact summits for all staff involved in continuous improvement. Success stories include improving door-to-needle times for stroke patients and engaging front-line caregivers in making improvements.
Sharing Best Practices and Overcoming Resistance
Cleveland Clinic aims to share best practices and improvements across its various locations. They strive to capture both successful practices and failed attempts to prevent reinventing the wheel. Their decentralized continuous improvement team structure allows them to understand and address unique challenges in each location. CI caregivers, including engineers and nurses, work closely with local clinicians and leaders to solve problems and capture the value of improvements. They focus on building trust and showing the value of improvement efforts to overcome resistance. Monthly impact summits provide a platform for sharing and disseminating best practices, and they use the Kynexus application to track and search for improvement initiatives.
The Role of Continuous Improvement and Future Directions
The Cleveland Clinic has employed a team of 68 continuous improvement caregivers to drive improvement efforts across the organization. The team includes project managers who provide an organizational overview and facilitate the spread of best practices. Cleveland Clinic's approach emphasizes empathy and engagement, recognizing the need for tailoring improvement initiatives to local contexts. While formal training in industrial engineering or healthcare process engineering may not be the primary determinant of success, thinking in a problem-solving and improvement-oriented way is crucial. Cleveland Clinic aims to continue promoting a culture of improvement and learning, and they are open to exploring the expansion of improvement-focused education.
Tony is the Senior Director of Continuous Improvement at the Cleveland Clinic. His work there is to help the organization continue building a sustainable improvement culture through implementation of the Cleveland Clinic Improvement Model. Tony first learned about continuous improvement while working at Honda of America. His 16-year tenure took him to various manufacturing sites in the U.S., Canada, and Japan helping to develop and transform organizations into Best-In-Class manufacturers. It was this experience that provided the foundation for his expertise in operations and process improvement that he had been able to apply in successive manufacturing leadership roles. After 20+ years working in the manufacturing sector, Tony made a career transition into healthcare. Leading the Lean Promotion office at OhioHealth, his efforts yielded the organization’s first ever strategy deployment connecting organizational level goals to project level assignments, tens of millions of dollars in cost reduction and countless hours of performance and executive coaching aimed at leader development. Tony is an influential leader in industry with a bachelor’s degree from Bowling Green State University in Quality Systems Engineering as well as technical degrees and certifications in coaching, engineering and automation. Additionally, he serves on the Engineering Advisory Board for Columbus State and the STEM Advisory Board at Upper Arlington City Schools.