Lean process improvement in outpatient healthcare systems

نویسنده

  • Linda R. LaGanga
چکیده

This paper considers the migration of lean process improvement methods from hospital systems to outpatient clinics. We review the strengths and weaknesses of a series of lean projects that were conducted in a community mental health center over a four-year period. We consider the evolution of the organization’s lean approaches and project results to identify areas of continuing research that appear promising to improve practical application of lean principles in outpatient settings.

منابع مشابه

Reducing Errors by RFID Technology to Achieve Lean Healthcare

Reducing wastes in the healthcare processes is crucial for developing a high performance health system. Adopted from the Toyota Production System (TPS), the Lean concept has emerged in recent years as a way of introducing innovative ideas to improve industrial processes. In the context of health care, Lean is considered as a continuous improvement model, which provides healthcare organization t...

متن کامل

Can a Healthcare “Lean Sweep” Deliver on What Matters to Patients?; Comment on “Improving Wait Times to Care for Individuals with Multimorbidities and Complex Conditions Using Value Stream Mapping”

Disconnects and defects in care – such as duplication, poor integration between services or avoidable adverse events – are costly to the health system and potentially harmful to patients and families. For patients living with multiple chronic conditions, such disconnects can be particularly detrimental. Lean is an approach to optimizing value by reducing waste (eg, duplication and defects) and ...

متن کامل

Lean six sigma process improvement in specimen receiving to improve stat chemistry turnaround times

  Objective: As a consequence of stat turnaround times (TATs) chronically exceeding 60 minutes, our laboratory was facing pressure to divert limited resources toward the implementation of an emergency department satellite laboratory. Peer-reviewed literature in clinical laboratory quality assurance and improvement indicates that between 60-70% of errors occur at the pre-analytical level.  Thus...

متن کامل

Evaluation of outpatient oncology services using lean methodology.

T he Lean Transformation Process is a methodology created by the Toyota Production System that focuses on the elimination of nonvalueadded operations in the workplace to create flow and quick response to customer demand. The process improvement strategy, when applied to the healthcare setting, can enhance the patient experience by cutting out waste (nonvalue added work) and providing a safer, s...

متن کامل

Title : Lean in Healthcare : The Unfilled Promise ?

In an effort to improve operational efficiency, healthcare services around the world have adopted process improvement methodologies from the manufacturing sector, such as Lean Production. In this paper we report on four multi-level case studies of the implementation of Lean in the English NHS. Our results show that this generally involves the application of specific Lean ‘tools’, such as ‘kaize...

متن کامل

ذخیره در منابع من


  با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید

متن کامل
عنوان ژورنال:

دوره   شماره 

صفحات  -

تاریخ انتشار 2012