Consultants from Toyota worked with Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, Texas, to improve its patient discharge efficiency in the ER, according to an article on the Dallas News website.
The team decided to use the facilty's existing light system. Each patient has his or her own room, with a light on the ceiling outside. Previously, the ER team didn't use the lights because they involved a time-consuming code and didn't seem useful.
The Toyota team got the hospital's information technology department to reconfigure the lights to be more applicable to the ER's needs.
Now, they use the lights to signal immediately to each other what needs to be done in each room. Purple means the room is clean and ready for the next patient. Orange means the patient is out having X-rays taken. Green means a doctor has said the patient is ready to go home. And red means the room needs to be cleaned.
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