Irvine car dealerships informed us that Toyota Kentucky has partnered with the Saint Joseph Hospital Foundation to donate a modified Toyota Camry to the rehabilitation department, located on the fifth floor of Saint Joseph Hospital.
According to Toyota Irvine Ca, the purpose of this vehicle is to help rehabilitate patients, which also include total joint replacement patients, practice getting in and out of their vehicle before traveling home. This is very important because this is one of the first obstacles these patients face after surgery. The expansion will greatly help patients across the region to maintain their mobility.
“We believe this is the first time Toyota worldwide has taken on such a project,” said Leslie Smart, CFRE, president, Saint Joseph Hospital Foundation. “We are thrilled to finally be able to have a celebration and share with the community one of the tangible ways Toyota is helping to make mobility a reality for many across the region.”
Reps at Irvine car dealerships tell us that the Saint Joseph Hospital Foundation’s partnership with Toyota Kentucky started over two years ago.
The modified Camry was put together at the Georgetown plant and reassembled it onsite last December inside the hospital. At the moment, the vehicle is helping patients through the recovery process and getting towards an active, independent lifestyle.
“At Toyota, we’re not just focused on building quality vehicles, but also being a vehicle for change throughout the communities where we operate,” said Kerry Creech, vice president of manufacturing at Toyota Kentucky. “We hope that this vehicle will be an irreplaceable tool for the hospital staff and will benefit many in our community for years to come.”
People at Irvine car dealerships say that when Toyota installed the car simulator at Saint Joseph Hospital, the team included a hydraulic lift so the car could be boosted to mimic the proper level of each patient’s vehicle. The car operates similarly to a normal vehicle with adjustable seats and a working trunk to offer patients a real-life experience during this therapy process.
Also, they added a unique touch: the license plate on the front of the car, which reads “SJH 1877” to commemorate the founding of Saint Joseph Hospital by the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth in 1877.
“We have an incredible team who help our patients be as independent as they can be following surgery, injury, or periods of immobility,” said Tony Houston, CEO, CHI Saint Joseph Health, and president, Saint Joseph Hospital. “We know that mobility – the ability to walk, to take care of yourself – is one of the keys to good health. We’ve had the car available for several months now, and our patients have loved it.”
Toyota Is Making Hospitals Safer And Faster
It hasn’t been long since nurses at Los Angeles County Harbor-UCLA Hospital had to move around a maze of wheelchairs, beds, boxes, and lights to locate surgical supplies in the equipment closet for the operating rooms.
However, as public hospitals such as Harbor-UCLA attempt to reduce costs and make patients happier, administrators have turned to a surprising partner: Toyota.
They are shaping the carmaker’s production system to health care — altering longstanding practices such as storing equipment, scheduling surgeries, and discharging patients. The philosophy, referred to as lean, relies on a continuous team effort to cut back on inefficiency and improve quality.
By utilizing Toyota’s methods as an influence, the operating room staff at Harbor-UCLA was able to rearrange the closet — giving everything an assigned location and placing easy-to-read labels. So, that means nurses and doctors can now locate what they require when they require it. This lets the team mobilize faster.
“It saves time because they don’t go looking for things — they know where they are,” says Dawna Willsey, a clinical director at the hospital.
Private hospitals in places such as Seattle and Wisconsin began utilizing Toyota’s system a decade or more ago. However, the concept is newer to safety-net hospitals, which are usually medical centers that historically have served large numbers of poor people. With the Affordable Care Act, these patients are gaining insurance coverage, and safety-net hospitals are encountering pressure to keep them from going elsewhere for care.
In California and other areas, some medical professionals have shown their skepticism since they can’t imagine that a process used to manufacture cars can be converted into treating patients. Others are offended by the use of Japanese vocabulary in the hospitals’ hallways, such as Muda (waste) and jidoka (automation with a human touch). Then there are others who are uncertain whether the changes are sustainable.
DeAnn McEwen, a health and safety specialist with National Nurses United, says lean management lowers nursing to an array of standardized tasks, very similar to a situation if nurses became robots who applied nuts and bolts to the same patients.
“The problem with that is patients, of course, are not widgets, and nurses are not robots,” she says. “And nursing care is not a commodity but a service. It’s a process that requires critical thinking and the application of judgment.”
However, research and experience from across the United States have revealed that using Toyota’s techniques in hospitals can enhance quality and safety for patients, says Kelly Pfeifer, director of high-value care at the California HealthCare Foundation. The foundation supported the funding for the project at Harbor-UCLA and four San Francisco Bay Area hospitals — San Francisco General Hospital, Contra Costa Regional Medical Center, San Mateo Medical Center, and the Alameda Health System.
Alterations influenced by the Toyota process have had straightforward, positive results, such as lowering the time patients spend at the hospital and decreasing medication errors, based on the claims from the foundation. Another positive note is that money has been saved. For instance, cutting down surgery cancellations at the San Mateo hospital saved almost half-million dollars, the foundation explains.