Lean Healthcare Philosophy

American health care is in crisis. The industry is struggling with skyrocketing costs, poor quality, nursing shortages and employee dissatisfaction— all symptoms of deeper problems inherent in the system itself.

More and more healthcare providers are realizing the imperative of improving quality and safety and eliminating waste as strategies for responding to the challenges. Enter Lean Healthcare, the “how to” of managing change and creating continuous improvement.

As led by Healthcare Performance Partners (HPP) and its affiliate, Lean Healthcare West [add link], Lean Healthcare (adapted from the Toyota Production System) is not just another project: it’s a way to transform your entire organization into a safe and high-quality, high-performing healthcare delivery system.

Lean Healthcare can eliminate many obstacles to excellence, such as cumbersome information technology systems, worker frustration, and inadvertent errors and oversights that can increase patient safety risks. Surprisingly few improvements require costly or sweeping high-tech “fixes.” Most often, simple, well designed interactions based on scientific observations and experiments bring nearly unimaginable improvement… fast.

Thoughtful design, rapid implementation, and continuous experiments and improvement are the hallmarks of Lean Healthcare. These principles inform all we do, whether helping with Lean Healthcare training, Kaizen events, implementation at the frontline of care via our one-of-a-kind reVIEW © course, transitioning to Six Sigma/Lean, or helping with Lean Healthcare facilities design (or redesign).

The basics of Lean Healthcare

HPP involves client teams in learning, applying, analyzing and making Lean Healthcare disciplines a regular part of the operating philosophy of the organization. Our goal is to build your organization’s core Lean Healthcare competencies—from top and middle managers to frontline workers—in a way that becomes self-sustaining after our engagement ends.

We provide Lean Healthcare training for key staff as we create a core of teachers among your own staff to help you sustain the gains. Your organization will develop a culture that includes this renewable source of success within the organization.

Applying Lean Healthcare principles can lead to improvements in a broad range of operating processes found in every healthcare organization:

• Admitting/Discharge
• Internal patient flow within and between departments
• Operating room turnover
• Scheduling processes and systems
• Workplace disorganization
• Medical Records
• Inventory (supplies) control
• Administrative processes and billing
• Equipment availability
• Shift change processes
• Pharmacy and Laboratory work flows and turnaround times
• Emergency Room work throughput
• Clinical Processes
• HR/Hiring Processes
• Med/Surg floor improvement
• A/R & A/P Processes
• Discharge

“The HPP team's ability to achieve buy-in from our management team and our Associates was a key factor in the success of our Lean Healthcare initiatives.” William T. Sugg, President & CEO Sumner Regional Health Systems

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