Written by Jeff Trageser and Mike Vazquez from Lifesharing were interviewed on the JIT Cafe podcast by Elisabeth Swan and Tracy O’Rourke to discuss how process improvement has been used to help procure and facilitate organ and tissue donations from donors to local transplant centers.
They discuss metrics used to track the success of organ transplant, dealing with events that are out of their control (death of a donor), handling relationships, care and empathy during a difficult time for donor families, the importance of structure and process in a highly regulated industry, and shifting from number of improvements to the quality of the improvements.
They also discuss the challenges of staffing with unstable and inconsistent demand, how they handle the variance process when matching donors with recipients, dealing with transportation logistics and maintaining the quality of the donation.
They also discuss how important the UCSD Green Belt program has been to engaging staff with Lean Six Sigma, and changing the culture in the organization.
You can watch the interview below, or the entire podcast episode video at https://youtu.be/E5Cw0RWj73M?si=ciizp2nkCivQGAvX&t=1536