Lean Health Care Overview

This class is build around a three-round simulation of patient, material, and information flows in a multi-clinic operation with centralized blood testing and radiology facilities. It is perfect for building wide understanding of the operational, management, and human components of lean health care across your organization. It will help you build enthusiasm for change and get everyone on the same page with a clear understanding of what lean is all about. After seeing this simulation, no one will have the opinion that lean is a manufacturing concept that does not fit health care. This course is normally one day (9 hours) in length, but shorter versions are available. It is often very valuable to extend the course to build familiarity with the basic lean tools such as 5S, visual control, standardized work, and source quality, that support lean thinking. These are all discussed from a health care perspective with specific examples how they are used in a patient-centered care environment.

A key feature of this class is that it explains lean as integrated approach that addresses operations structure, management systems, organizational culture, and human performance. Course content addresses:

• Lean as a service philosophy that focuses on value delivery to patients and the larger community while demonstrating respect for people, especially front-line employees
• Structural principles as a requisite for elimination of the eight wastes of health care and lean operations management. These include operational focus and work aggregation, continuous work and patient flow coordinated by visual scheduling mechanisms, pacing and work leveling, and selective resource dedication.
• The lean work system, a collection of practices built upon ownership, teamwork, and standardization that promotes engagement of everyone in the organization to continuously improve health care processes and methods.
• Visibility and jidoka, management systems put in place to make procedural quality, patient safety, and other operational issues immediately visible and to insure containment and rapid, permanent resolution of operational problems through designed response systems and structured problem solving.
• Value stream management: a systematic approach for aligning all operational systems with delivery of safe and effective patient-centered care.
• The role of tools such as 5S, visual control, standardized work, setup reduction, and source quality in supporting the lean health care.

The presentation is rich with examples of lean health care practices that will make the dramatic potential of lean to improve your operations clear to all. It breaks down notions that lean is a “manufacturing approach”, a “collection of tools” or a “program of the month” and quickly builds passion and enthusiasm for lean transformation. We are happy to customize this course to meet the needs of special audiences and circumstances.