Increasing cardio-thoracic productivity at Erasmus MC

The Thoraxcenter of Erasmus MC started an improvement project in 2015 in order to increase the number of open-heart surgeries by 150 for three consecutive years (450 in total, +46%), and to decrease the access time from 12–14 to 2–3 weeks by the end of 2016. This was required to attain economy of scale in a highly competitive market. In this paper we describe the first year of the project, focusing on its structure and interventions taken, resulting in 165 additional open-heart surgeries carried out in 2016 and a significantly shorter access time of 2–3 weeks.