Lean Healthcare

1
Lean Healthcare

• Lean Industries Series

2
Topics

• What is Lean?
• Why Lean Healthcare?
• What is Lean Healthcare?
• Benefits of Lean Healthcare
• Implementing Lean Healthcare
• Leading Lean Hospitals
• Summary
• The Bottom Line

3
Why Lean Healthcare?

• The basic values of Lean Healthcare are to
• Put the customer/patient first
• Define value in terms of the customer
• Learn to see the 8 wastes of Healthcare
• Make less is more the way to do things

To be a Lean Thinker means to constantly strive
to improve by focusing on driving out waste in
all its forms. By attacking the ever present 8
wastes of Healthcare, greater value can be
created with less effort.
4
Why Lean Healthcare?
Lean is based on reducing costs rather than
raising prices or reducing services.
Source www.leanhealthcaresolutions.com
5
Why Lean Healthcare?

• Why implement lean into the healthcare industry
• 20,000 incorrect drug prescriptions per year in
  the US
• 500 incorrect surgical operations per week
• 50 new born babies dropped at birth per day
• Enormous defect rate (estimated at nearly 45 by
  the New England Journal of Medicine, June 2003)
• Cost escalation
• 60-80 of costs can be reduced
• Work and patient flow will improve
• Patient as well as non-patient care processes
  will improve
• Improves morale, productivity and bottom line

Source www.leanhealthcaresolutions.com
6
Why Lean Healthcare?
Types of Healthcare Waste
TYPES LABORATORY EXAMPLE PATIENT CARE EXAMPLE (ONCOLOGY)
Defects Mislabeled patient specimens Wrong medication delivered to patient
Overproduction Just in case blood tubes drawn from patients but not used Patients seen by MD faster than can be treated by chemo causing delays
Transportation Moving specimens long distances from receiving to testing Long walks from MD clinic to chemotherapy
Waiting Specimens waiting in batches for testing Patients waiting due to schedule exceeding capacity
Inventory Expired test reagents Expired chemo drugs
Motion Technologist waling due to poor layout Nurses searching for missing supplies
Over processing Time/date stamps on labels that are not used Time spent creating a schedule that is not followed
Human Potential Employee ideas not listened to Employee ideas not listened to
Source www.superfactory.com
7
Summary

• American healthcare is in crisis
• The industry is struggling with skyrocketing
  costs, poor quality, nursing shortages and
  employee dissatisfaction
• Healthcare providers are realizing the imperative
  of improving quality and safety and eliminating
  waste as strategies
• Lean healthcare is a way to transform your entire
  organization into a safe and high-quality,
  high-performing healthcare deliver system

Lean Healthcare is the how to of managing
change and creating continuous improvement
8
Summary

• Lean thinking embeds quality at source into every
  process with big implications for mortality and
  medical errors
• It frees up the latent capacity in current
  systems without requiring new capital
• It releases more time to spend on solving the
  difficult cases
• As you improve current processes you see new
  opportunities for designing alternative ways of
  delivering care with different working
  practices and the right equipment

There is no one lean best way but several!
9
Summary

• Lean healthcare doesnt happen unless
• Someone is responsible for rethinking the whole
  process
• Is supported by all those involved in running the
  process
• The organization, with expert help, develops a
  future state plan that shows where to conduct
  breakthrough improvement events and where to use
  lean tools

10
The Bottom Line
Healthcare facilities must find ways to conserve
resources in order to keep costs contained and
reduced to ensure patient health and
safety. This can only be accomplished by
reducing waste through continuous
improvement Lean Healthcare will improve
profitability for your healthcare organization