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Trim the excess with lean management

Staff Development Weekly: Insight on Evidence-Based Practice in Education, November 18, 2005

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Lean management is a trend quickly gaining popularity in the healthcare setting. In short, it is a set of industrial principles that seeks to eliminate waste by taking out unnecessary processes and redirecting human effort toward value-added business operations. This reduces production time, decreases costs and improves customer satisfaction.

Though the roots of lean management lie in the automotive industry, hospitals are beginning to adopt the methodology as a way to cut costs and improve patient care. Two Seattle-based hospitals, Virginia Mason Medical Center and Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center, have already begun applying the concept in their facilities.

If you're considering implementing a lean program in your own facility, consider the following:

• Lean is a "top-down" endeavor. In order to succeed, you must have full management support to engage in the lean concepts.
• Be patient with the process: It can take years to yield results.
• Be prepared to address skepticism. It may be effective to benchmark the processes prior to implementation and then measure them at an appropriate time afterward. Share results and improvements with management and employees.
• Consider hiring a consultant from the manufacturing industry or schedule a visit to a lean enterprise or factory for guidance and perspective.
• Conduct "value stream mapping" or another mapping tool/technique to identify, analyze and lay out the effective and wasteful processes used presently within your organization.
• From this "present" snapshot of your organization, create a map of the "future state" of your organization.
• Eliminate or consolidate those steps that do not bring value to the process, creating a work flow that is more efficient.

If you're looking for resources, the Institutes for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) promotes the adoption of the methodology and offers information on its Web site (www.ihi.org). The Lean Enterprise Institute (www.lean.org), a nonprofit organization that promotes the principles of lean thinking, and healthcare quality improvement organizations (QIOs) may also offer assistance and free services.

Source: Puget Sound Business Journal (Seattle)

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