Pat said, “Well as you can see, there are 11 patients
waiting here in this big waiting area; 6 waiting to get regis–
tered and 5 are waiting to be seen by the doctor. If we build
more exam rooms and hire some more doctors, we can
see these patients quicker and they won’t have to wait.”
“But what is the problem?”
“What do you mean!? We just explained it.” The
Schmidts were a bit annoyed.
Deb said, “Try one more time and explain the problem.
Why did you want to meet me? What were your concerns?”
“Well, we are losing our patients to competition. Our
patients are waiting too long to see the doctor. When we
looked at our patient customer satisfaction survey results,
our patients were highly dissatisfied with the amount of time
they had to wait to see the doctor.”
“Do you have any metrics?”
“Well, the patient satisfaction has gone down from 86
percent to 54 percent and our revenues have gone down
by 40 percent as well.”
“Aha! Did you ever measure how long it takes for a
patient right from arrival till when they leave the clinic?”
Pat and Pam looked at each other, and both said at the
same time, “No. Why would we do that?”
“Well, then how do you know that your patients are wait–
ing too long? How much is ‘too’ long?” The Schmidts felt a
bit embarrassed.
Case Study The Westerville Physician Practice: Value-Stream Mapping
Drs. Pat and Pam Schmidt started the Westerville Physician
Practice in Westerville, Ohio, in 2000 to provide primary
care services to the community. There was not much
development in Westerville at that time, however, the cou–
ple started the clinic anticipating future growth.Competi–
tion was weak and they ran the clinic by themselves with a
nurse and receptionist. Eventually, Westerville had a burst
of growth and development withmore and more people
moving to this suburb of Columbus, Ohio. There were
more patients to see and more clinics popped up. Patients
had more choices to get primary care. Patients chose the
clinics where they were seen quickly. The Schmidts hired
some more doctors, and Medical Assistants (MAs) to meet
the increasing demand. It helped for a while but eventually
they started losing their customers to their main competi–
tion a few blocks away—The Westerville Fast-track Physi–
cian Practice. By 2015 the revenues were down by
40 percent. Informally collected patient satisfaction scores
related to wait times were down from 86 percent to an
abysmal low of 54 percent. Doing business the old way
was not going to help. The Schmidts had to rethink a new
strategy to continue supporting the growing community
and not lose their patients to the competition. They
thought of building a bigger clinic and hiring more doctors.
Pat Schmidt was quite active on LinkedIn. Pat came
across a link on Dr. Deb Louis’s profile—“Physician prac–
