UL And Value Capture Team Up To Support Healthcare Leaders Seeking Lean Transformation

JACKSONVILLE, Fla., May 24, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Today UL, a world leader in advancing safety, goes to market with new healthcare advisory services in collaboration with Value Capture LLC. The services aim to guide healthcare executives seeking to transform the performance of their organizations with a unifying focus on safety and quality.

With Value Capture, an organization featuring 15 years of proven results in healthcare advisory, UL enhances its ability to deliver a unique set of services that combine its century-long safety mission with its expertise in Lean. The offerings are available immediately from Knowledge Services, UL's fast-growing training, advisory and software solutions business unit, and can be supplied to customers anywhere in the world.

A frequently-cited report from the Institute of Medicine estimates that in the U.S. alone, between 44,000 and 98,000 people die annually from medical mistakes. And current estimates from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality place medical errors as the eighth leading cause of death, making medicine deadlier than highway accidents, breast cancer, or AIDS.

The combination of medical errors, malpractice litigation and ballooning costs are forcing the industry to increasingly search for innovative ways to serve patients, manage their organizations and engage staff.  UL and Value Capture have proven that the application of Lean principles and methodology in a quest for measurable excellence can be part of the solution that the healthcare industry so desperately needs. 

The collaboration offers comprehensive solutions designed to help achieve the highest levels of quality and safety, lowest cost, and shortest customer response time, without tradeoffs. It provides access to advisory and training services that give guidance on a true Lean transformation at all levels and beyond just one department. The resulting shift can challenge the traditional paradigms of the leadership top-down management approach and create an environment that engages all employees in the improvement process. 

"Leaders of hospitals, ambulatory care centers and other healthcare organizations using our advisory services develop a comprehensive understanding of the field's most powerful leadership model, anchored by lean principles, and leverage it to produce remarkable, sustainable results," said Juan Amador, director of the Center for Continuous Improvement & Innovation for UL Knowledge Services. "The advisory model from Value Capture has consistently given institutions the skills to produce 50 to 90 percent reductions in harm to workers and patients while stripping millions in waste from the system and speeding up the ability to meet patient needs."

By empowering individuals and organizations in this industry, giving them the leadership framework, expertise and techniques required, they can conduct their own Lean transformation.

"Working with UL pairs Value Capture with another of the world's leading organizations on the quest for perfect safety, across everything an organization does," said Geoff Webster, Value Capture managing director. "It extends our reach to CEOs who share our mission to create healthcare organizations demonstrating levels of excellence in safety, quality and profitability that set a new standard for the industry."

An up-to-date listing of advisory and training offerings from UL and Value Capture is available online at www.ulknowledgeservices.com or www.valuecapturellc.com.

About UL

UL is a premier global safety science company with more than 100 years of proven history. Employing nearly 9,000 professionals in 46 countries, UL is evolving the future of safety with five distinct business units – Product Safety, Environment, Life & Health, Verification and Knowledge Services – to meet the expanding needs of customers and the global public. For more information on UL's family of companies and network of 95 laboratory, testing and certification facilities, go to UL.com.

About Value Capture

Over the past 15 years, Value Capture has been associated with some of the earliest and most compelling demonstrations that perfect safety and clinical performance, with enhanced financial outcomes, are achievable in healthcare. The organization has done so by helping healthcare leaders drive one unified organizational strategy, not separate from the business case, but as THE business case for the organization. It is based on the principles of so-called deep Lean, but goes far beyond to encompass every element of a true leadership system, from organized and cascaded strategic planning to standard work that flows from leaders to the front lines and back again.

Media Contact
Natasha LaBruce
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SOURCE UL