VA’s Lean Healthcare Transformation: Innovating the Veteran Patient Experience
We are proud of the vigilance and dedication of the tens of thousands of VA employees who work everyday to provide healthcare to Veterans across our nation. As technical writers for the Veterans Affairs Center for Applied Systems Engineering (VA-CASE), we’ve witnessed the powerful impacts of Lean Management System training and thinking on the healthcare systems that support Veterans. Health systems engineering takes a systems-level view of healthcare services to reveal opportunities for continuous improvement to patient experience, which may include using portable systems to get to rural patients such as a portable ultrasound machine.
Our co-authored book, VA’s Lean Healthcare Transformation: Innovating the Veteran Patient Experience, will be published by CRC Press (a Taylor & Francis member) in December 2016. We are proud to share with you how we worked with health systems engineers, healthcare providers, executives, managers, and front-line staff to tell the powerful story of VA’s Lean Healthcare Transformation.
Project Goals
- Tell the story of VHA’s Lean healthcare transformation-a national effort to deploy Lean thinking across the nation’s largest system of medical centers and outpatient clinics.
- Engage a readership of VHA leaders, employees, Veterans, and the general public.
- Publish the successes and challenges of implementing Lean within healthcare contexts, especially within a large organization.
Our Solution
Lean implementation within healthcare is a fairly new endeavor-especially at the level and scope achieved by VA. We were honored to tell the story of VA’s organizational change efforts. Our background in qualitative research, literature review, and rhetorical analysis-combined with our years of experience as technical writers for Lean healthcare organizations-made us the ideal writing partners for this project. As the lead writers and project managers, we completed the following tasks within a 9 month period:
- Co-developed the book concept and outlined chapters
- Wrote a book proposal and secured a publisher
- Conducted over 100 interviews across 4 VA Medical Centers
- Wrote 5 chapters on insights collected during site visits and co-wrote 5 other chapters
- Managed the book’s completion, collaborating with 2 coauthors and 6 contributing authors
- Delivered the final book manuscript on-time and on budget
Key Takeaways
- We are experts at telling the stories behind innovations.
- We draw on observations, interviews, conversations, brainstorm sessions, presentations, and notes provided by Subject Matter Experts to translate innovations to key stakeholders and the general public.
- We work efficiently: a full book in 9 months on top of 30+ other client deliverables.
- We craft the writing experience around your needs. We’ve been known to transform scribbles,
conversations, bullet-points, and post-it reflections into compelling stories. We work with all levels of participants to capture the wide range of voices that comprise and shape organizations engaged in innovation and transformation.
“Untold Content is very personable and truly present when working on a deliverable. They dig in and basically become a subject matter expert in what we are working on. I am in awe of how they can take a few polished bullet points and transform it into something even better.”
We would love the opportunity to support your medical technical writing needs. Check out our services!
