Continuous Improvement is a well-known and consolidated concept in literature and practice and is considered vital in today’s business environment. In 2003 a survey, as part of the international CINet survey, has been performed in the Netherlands in order to gain insight into the current practices and the evolution of continuous improvement over the past 5 years. From a sample of 51 companies, ...

BACKGROUND Memory disorders and Alzheimer's disease (AD) share the same risk factors with cardiovascular diseases. OBJECTIVE We tested whether elevated N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) levels would predict any incident dementia or AD. METHODS The association between NT-proBNP and the risk of dementia was evaluated in a total of 7,158 subjects without previous memory diso...

The recent introduction and successful application of Lean Thinking in health is generating a belief that continuous improvement (a product of Lean) can be delivered in the context of health care, as long as key organisational principles are in place. This paper offers case studies to illustrate where Lean methods are being introduced into a primary care commissioning organisation and are deliv...

Based on a 143-month longitudinal study of an academic medical center, this paper examines operations management practices of continuous improvement, workflow balancing, benchmarking, and process reengineering within a hospital’s perioperative operations. Specifically, this paper highlights datadriven efforts within perioperative sub-processes to balance overall patient workflow by eliminating ...

A substantial body of theoretical and practical knowledge has been developed on continuous improvement. However, there is still a considerable lack of empirically grounded contributions and theories on collaborative improvement, that is, continuous improvement in an interorganizational setting. The CO-IMPROVE project investigated whether and how the concept of continuous improvement can be exte...