The 7^th Conference for Health Care was held in Tokyo again with the support of three sponsoring companies. Over two days, specific examples of initiatives centered on AIH and the Virginia Mason Medical Center (hereinafter VMMC) were presented and a very active discussion took place. This time, 95 people from Japan and abroad participated.^* Program is attached.

VMMC CEO Gary Kaplan and Transformation Sensei Chika Lambert gave lectures. Their lectures recognized that VMMC was constantly evolving, including early improvement workshops and medical safety initiatives, as well as a framework for creating leadership and innovation in organizations that improve the quality of medical care based on improvement. In particular, the fact that not only the medical staff but also patients and their families were involved in improvement activities and the construction of a new building gives us a lot of suggestions as a hospital with a mantra of “Patient First”.

Mr. Yutaka Aso, Chairman of Aso Co., Ltd. and other staff who work in the medical field of Aso Group introduced specific examples. In the keynote speech, Chairman Aso said that he will continue to have the desire to improve PS (Patients Satisfaction) and OS (Owners Satisfaction) by making improvements on ES (Employees Satisfaction) in order to improve the Japanese medical world. He also stated that he would like to continue his efforts to promote TQM activities and team medical care, and strengthen the medical network in the region.

In addition, Hiroshima Prefectural Hospital, Ehime Prefectural Central Hospital, and Osaka City University Hospital reported the introduction of improvement activities and examples of initiatives. Hiroshima Prefectural Hospital introduced examples of improving the efficiency of goods management and placement by thoroughly implementing 5S, and the use of Value Stream Maps to reduce waste and reduce waiting time for outpatients. Ehime Prefectural Central Hospital reported on organization management and leadership efforts to establish human resources development and improvement culture through TQM activities. Osaka City University Hospital introduced specific examples of improvements in rehabilitation interventions.
In response to these reports, there were many questions from the venue about how to overcome difficult points in actual implementation, tips for establishment, and how to lead to improvement becoming a culture involving in-hospital staff.

A report that received a particularly great response was “Innovation of nursing plans and records by nursing navigation content: Hospital management and quality improvement of medical care and nursing care” by Ns. Kajiwara of our nursing department on the second day of the program (2^nd of November). In her report, nurses worked on reducing the labor of records that occupy a lot of time in the work of medical staff and the construction of a nursing record system that leads to a patient adaptive path. This is an activity that contributes not only to the labor saving of recording work but also to complication prevention and sharing information in team medical care. As well as gaining empathy from medical personnel at the conference and creating new value through improvement activities, Participants from the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare who attended were also very interested asking questions such as "How is nursing assessment done?" and "How is the nursing navigation content linked to other systems?"

Sponsoring Companies

• Aso Corporation ／ Hitachi, Ltd. ／ Mitsubishi Corporation