Quincy Lake Clinic

Abstract

Olga Zimmerman was the clinical operations director of the Quincy Lake Clinic (QLC), a provider-based primary and specialty care clinic. For the past four months, Zimmerman had been learning her new role and trying to change the organization using Lean concepts. She had many process-improvement opportunities and had been recording her observations during her frequent gemba walks. She had created a pile of sticky notes of various issues she thought she should address and had some possible solutions in mind. Zimmerman wanted QLC to double its throughput rate while improving delivery, safety, and quality at the same time. Students must identify and prioritize the key issues for Zimmerman to address. Excerpt UVA-OM-1699 Oct. 16, 2020 Quincy Lake Clinic Friday evening, 6:00 p.m. Frustrated, Olga Zimmerman leaned back in her chair and let a frustrated laugh escape into the silence. Her partner was out of town, her day had been full of “firefighting” as usual, and she decided to finally tackle the task she had only been able to dream about getting to all day—developing an operational plan for the Quincy Lake Primary and Specialty Care Clinic (QLC). She had been the clinical operations director since earning her degree from the Darden School of Business, and she laughed again at the thought that she was a prime candidate for the role of protagonist in one of the many cases she'd read that had started with a similar scene: a frustrated manager thinking about a problem—and leaning back in a chair. QLC was a provider-based primary and specialty care clinic established in 2016 in order to serve outpatient needs at Northeast Regional Hospital (NRH), west of Athens, Georgia, in Linden County. The state-of-the-art clinic offered access to primary care and specialists for varying levels of ambulatory care, and diagnostic services for post-procedure follow-up and prevention that included approximately 20 specialties. . . .