Process Redesign For Health Care Using Lean Thinking

Process Redesign for Health Care Using Lean Thinking is a response to a simple, but hard to answer, question and is the result of the experiences of a working doctor who was also the chief safety and quality officer of an Australian teaching hospital. At this hospital, he observed that the Emergency Department was staff by talented, well-trained, and respected doctors and nurses. The facilities were modern, and the work load unexceptional, but the department was close to melt down. Bad things were happening to patients, everyone was blaming each other, lots of things had been tried but nothing was getting better and no one could explain why. The problem was not a lack of technical knowledge or expertise, the problem was that no one stood back and said, "what’s the best way to move 200 or 300 patients a day through the complicated and varying, sequence of steps needed to sort out the many different problems that bring patients to our department?" These challenges are faced by hospitals and health services all over the world. There are difficulties with patient flow, congestion, queues, inefficient utilization of resources, problems engaging clinical staff in improvement programs, adverse incidents, and budget constraints. Lean thinking and value stream analysis gives hospitals and health services struggling with these issues the insights they need to help themselves. This book provides a method that systematically turns those insights into working programs of service and system redesign. The book is divided into two sections. The first section gives the background to the approach, and systematically works through the Process Redesign methodology, step-by-step. The second section is a series of case studies that show the methodology in action, what worked and what didn’t work. The goal of any process redesign is simple: the right care, for the right person, at the right time, in the right place, and right the first time. This book helps the people who work in hospitals and health services realize these goals by working together.

A growing, aging population; the rise to epidemic proportions of various chronic diseases; competing, often overlapping medical technologies; and of course, skyrocketing costs compounded by waste and inefficiency - these are just a few of the multifarious challenges currently facing healthcare delivery. An unexpected source of solutions is being imported from the manufacturing sector: lean thinking. Lean Principles for Healthcare presents a conceptual framework, management principles, and practical tools for professionals tasked with designing and implementing modern, streamlined healthcare systems or overhauling faulty ones. Focusing on core components such as knowledge management, e-health, patient-centeredness, and collaborative care, chapters illustrate lean concepts in action across specialties (as diverse as nursing, urology, and emergency care) and around the globe. Extended case examples show health systems responding to consumer needs and provider realities with equal efficiency and effectiveness, and improved quality and patient outcomes. Further, contributors tackle the gamut of technological, medical, cultural, and business issues, among them: Initiatives of service-oriented architecture towards performance improvement Adapted lean thinking for emergency departments Lean thinking in dementia care through smart assistive technology Supporting preventive healthcare with persuasive services Value stream mapping for lean healthcare A technology mediated solution to reduce healthcare disparities Geared toward both how lean ideas can be carried out and how they are being used successfully in the real world, Lean Principles for Healthcare not only brings expert knowledge to healthcare managers and health services researchers but to all who have an interest in superior healthcare delivery.

Lean Thinking for Emerging Healthcare Leaders: How to Develop Yourself and Implement Process Improvements aims to solve the issues in modern day healthcare by handing over the reins of the improvement process to healthcare professionals. Putting those who are doing the work and are closest to the actual situation in the lead. The purpose of this book is to help you understand how to develop yourself and your leadership in such a way that will best benefit your team and your patients. This includes change management practices that will help to build commitment with your team members, colleagues, management, patients, and other stakeholders. This book educates you, as a leading medical professional, in the principles and values of Lean leadership and management. It will teach you how to improve healthcare from the inside, making it safer, better, faster, more accessible, and more affordable. With this book we want to inspire, motivate, and stimulate you to lead continuous improvement—while being respectful to people—on your way to ideal care for every patient. The primary target audience for the book are medical professionals who have (recently) acquired leadership, management, or business responsibilities. The book will also be of high value to those who obtained temporary leadership positions, like project leaders, problem solvers, change managers, and innovators. Because most of the teachings in the book are meta skills and ways of thinking, the book is easily relatable and transferable to other disciplines and even sectors.

Healthcare organizations that have already applied Lean thinking to their processes, with the diligence of effective management and strong leadership support, are now realizing the benefits of their efforts. And, many of those benefits surpass what was thought possible just a few years ago. To be successful, these organizations had to provide the leadership to arrive at their future state. Written by a Shingo Prize-winning author and Lean sensei, Lean Leadership for Healthcare: Approaches to Lean Transformation explains how to apply Lean improvement to both clinical and non-clinical processes. It presents valuable lessons learned by the author over the years of leading improvements in this complex industry and lays out a clear roadmap for initiating your Lean improvements. Illustrating the leadership behaviors required to achieve sustainable success, the book is ideal for leaders in the healthcare industry looking to initiate Lean improvements to clinical and non-clinical processes. It reviews the fundamentals of Lean and explains how to link a strategy of continuous improvement to corporate strategy to achieve operational excellence. It also describes how to mitigate the risk of failure when undergoing large-scale corporate change—including what can go wrong and how to prevent these failures. The book includes case studies that share the time-tested insights of healthcare team members and leaders. It outlines a management system for sustaining your Lean improvements and provides the Lean leadership approaches, thoughts, and visual tools you’ll need to guide your organization along the path toward world-class healthcare performance.

Organizations around the world are using Lean to redesign care and improve processes in a way that achieves and sustains meaningful results for patients, staff, physicians, and health systems. Lean Hospitals, Third Edition explains how to use the Lean methodology and mindsets to improve safety, quality, access, and morale while reducing costs, increasing capacity, and strengthening the long-term bottom line. This updated edition of a Shingo Research Award recipient begins with an overview of Lean methods. It explains how Lean practices can help reduce various frustrations for caregivers, prevent delays and harm for patients, and improve the long-term health of your organization. The second edition of this book presented new material on identifying waste, A3 problem solving, engaging employees in continuous improvement, and strategy deployment. This third edition adds new sections on structured Lean problem solving methods (including Toyota Kata), Lean Design, and other topics. Additional examples, case studies, and explanations are also included throughout the book. Mark Graban is also the co-author, with Joe Swartz, of the book Healthcare Kaizen: Engaging Frontline Staff in Sustainable Continuous Improvements, which is also a Shingo Research Award recipient. Mark and Joe also wrote The Executive’s Guide to Healthcare Kaizen.

Typically entrenched and systemic, healthcare problems require the sort of comprehensive solutions that can only be addressed by a change in culture and a shift in thinking. Applying Lean in Healthcare: A Collection of International Case Studies demonstrates how honest appraisal, intelligent planning, and vigilant follow-up have led to dramatic improvements in a variety of healthcare settings across the world. It teaches us how innovative organizations can find sustainable solutions to seemingly intractable problems by following a path guided by Lean Thinking. Lean methods may not solve every healthcare problem, but as these cases prove, changing a culture rather than personnel results in more effective sustainable change.

Utilizing the 3Ms of Process Improvement in Healthcare supplies step-by-step guidance on how to use the 3Ms of change leadership to improve healthcare processes. Complete with forms, templates, and healthcare case studies, it illustrates the proper application of the 3Ms. It weaves stories throughout the book of role models who have succeeded, as w

Many companies conduct Lean training and projects, but few have tapped the wealth of ideas in the minds of their staff like Baylor Scott and White Health. This book documents the path Steve Hoeft and Robert Pryor created at Baylor Scott and White Health and shares what worked as well as what didn t illustrating over seven years of successes and fai