Importance Of Lean Thinking In Health Care

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Abstract - Interest in the application of lean thinking, its implementation has been growing significantly in the last few years. The main intent of this paper is to study about lean and its need in health care industry. The next section of the paper focuses about the implementation principles that an organization should adopt and can incorporate. Subsequently various benefits and application areas of lean health care are also discussed as a part of this paper. Our paper also focuses on the five lean implementation techniques that can be adopted by any healthcare organizations to improve the care processes. Key terms: DART, Lean in health, Non-value added, VMCC, VMPS 1. INTRODUCTION Lean was initially developed and implemented in Toyota production …show more content…

– Mark Graban, Lean Hospitals: Improving Quality, Patient Safety, and Employee Satisfaction. According to Dahlgaard et al., There is a need to develop a maximum value to the patients by focusing on their needs, addressing their concerns by employee involvement and continuous improvement to provide a quality treatment to the patients [5]. Lean uses a set of methods and philosophies by reducing waste and waits. So this can improve the flow of patients and, information or goods. The waste in the health care industry refers to the interruptions, delays, mistakes, and waiting time of the patient to consult a doctor or receive treatment, excess staff etc. Thus implementing lean in health care industries provides an effective way in every aspect of health care organizations. Table 1 given below briefly summarizes about the ten concepts of implementation principles in the reviewed papers of health care. Table I Functional Implementation Principles [10] [7] S.no Implementation Principles 1. Lean provides values to customers they actually desire. 2. Identify the value stream and eliminate waste. 3. Line up the remaining steps to create continuous flow 4. Pull production based on customers 5. Start over in a pursuit of perfection ‘the happy situation of perfect value provided with zero waste. 6. Lean is an attitude of continuous improvement 7. Lean is unity of purpose 8. Lean is respect …show more content…

Strong commitment and inspiring leadership from senior leaders is essential to the success of an effort this challenging [2]. The CEO must be a vocal, visible champion of lean management, create an environment where it is permissible to fail, set stretch goals, and encourage “leaps of faith” [2]. Top management plays a crucial role in success of lean implementation. So, leadership can be stated as a critical aspect for lean implementation. It can be also viewed that organization can get success only if it comprises of healthy culture, skilled workers, and strong leadership

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