Lean Healthcare

Lean Healthcare. What is Lean Healthcare? How is Lean applied to Healthcare. Lean Hospitals. Lean Medical. Opex Minute Presented by EMS Consulting Group, Inc.:
emsstrategies.com
#opexminute #kaizen #healthcare #leanmanufacturingmanagement #leanmanagement #valuestream
Welcome to today’s edition of the OpEx Minute, presented by EMS Consulting Group. Today we will be talking about Lean in Healthcare. How do the concepts of Lean apply to healthcare settings?
Let’s talk about two complimentary ways that we talk about lean. 1. Lean is a philosophy focused on providing our customer with a defect free product or service when they need it and in the right quantity. 2. Lean is continuous improvement and respect for people. I believe this truly describes what a lean culture is. Applying these definitions to healthcare makes perfect sense. The key customer is the patient. What is unique about healthcare is that it is a service in which the customer and the output is the patient. A patient goes through a series of steps. Through these steps, we want to maximize value to the patient. In this case, value includes defect free delivery of services when they are needed. Services should also include caring and compassion. If we apply the philosophy of lean to healthcare, we would expect the following benefits:
1. Faster delivery of services / Faster Turnaround times
2. Fewer errors
3. Increased Patient Safety
4. Lower costs
5. Increased capacity
6. Improved Patient Outcomes
The basic methodologies that we covered in our lean transformation approach video including strategy deployment, value stream mapping, and kaizen all can be applied to healthcare organizations. Specific concepts and tools like 5S Workplace Organization, pull systems, visual management, and others have been successfully applied to healthcare. We have experience helping healthcare organizations become lean in healthcare including health plans, medical offices, and hospital systems.
If you have an interest in learning more about lean healthcare, visit our website at www.emsstrategies.com and contact us. We would be happy to help.