Founding Partner of QFI Consulting (QFI) Alex Knight has developed an innovative approach, known as Pride and Joy. The approach has been implemented in numerous healthcare organizations in the around the world, consistently achieving quick and considerable improvements in performance

QFI supports healthcare providers achieve a breakthrough in performance through innovation and insight supported by digital transformation. QFI’s software applies the Theory of Constraints (TOC) – a management methodology developed by Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt – to healthcare, to support organizations drive business innovation, strategy development and performance improvements.

By using The Pride and Joy approach and software, hospitals are able to improve quality of care, access to care, safety of care and affordability of care simultaneously. This is done by synchronizing the work of resource, and by identifying and focusing improvements on the few leverage points, which have the biggest impact on the performance of the system. The approach has been implemented in university hospitals, medium sized and smaller regional hospitals, as well as in outpatient environments, consistently delivering quick results. For example, in Utah Mental Health State Hospital, the length of stay for rehabilitation and mental health became 15-30% shorter as they succeeded to shorten their waiting list from 18 months queue to zero, without adding any resources.

In the first Nordic implementation in Kanta-Häme Central Hospital, Finland the length of stay was shortened by 10% during 14 weeks on the pilot wards. The improvement continued, reaching an 18% reduction in length of stay over a period of 10 months. Kanta-Häme is looking to expand the approach to further wards in the county.

“Bringing the Pride and Joy approach to the Nordics is part of NHG’s mission to share global best practices to improve health and social care in the Nordic countries and beyond,” NHG’s Senior Partner, Dr. Johan Groop commented.

“We are very excited to become part of NHG and look forward to applying the approach together in the Nordics, and beyond. The smooth collaboration in Kanta-Häme showed us that our values and culture match together and we have very similar ways of working. NHG does a fabulous job in learning new ideas and engaging with clients and their leadership in projects. As NHG is a growing and internationalizing company, the Pride and Joy approach offers global opportunities for them and unites their teams to work together across the Nordics, “QFI’s Founding Partner Alex Knight commented.

In a nutshell, the Pride and Joy approach is based on…

• … a patient-centered and clinically led way of improving flow in all patient pathways simultaneously
• …focused improvement: surprisingly few factors have a 90+% effect on performance. How do you identify these leverage points and their effects, given the complex nature of healthcare environments?
• …synchronizing patient flows, which decreases unnecessary load caused by the health and social care system itself. Thus, fast results can be achieved without adding any resources.
• For example, a world-famous top hospital noticed, that 40% of the delay caused in patients’ discharge, had in 40% of the cases non-clinically justified reasons.
• The approach is described in Alex Knight’s business novel Pride and Joy. Behind the fictional story is a lot of practical experience. https://www.qficonsulting.com/pride-and-joy-book