Lean Approach In Health Care

According to (Deloitte Report), the lean approach is best known for successful application and leaving lasting changes. Therefore, if the approach is well crafted and applied in a patient-centred healthcare environment, it helps in bringing dynamic improvement and changes to the healthcare sector that would result in patient satisfaction and improved clinical outcome. Some of the direct benefits of applying the lean approach in a healthcare environment include, improve the quality of care, improved patient care, decreased wait times, decreased the cost of treatment, increased efficiency, enhanced patient experience, and increased staff satisfaction. To achieve this, the lean approach has to follow the four essential steps during its application
Translating lean approach into the health care environment i.e. making lean language meaningful and relevant – most healthcare organizations aim to provide quality services to their patients, yet this approaches are not in consistent with the lean philosophy. For instance, ambulatory clinics book patient appointments early in advance so that they are seen always working. As a result patients, hardly get to their scheduled appointment times and spend most times waiting to be served. Lean approach is patient-centred, if the health care organizations wish to succeed while implementing this approach; they need to adopt the principle with its tools to their current working environment to realize the benefits of lean approach.
2. Lean leadership development- i.e. setting a vision for the healthcare organization transformation – it is imperative for the healthcare organizations to include the vision and common understanding of the lean approach to their organizations’ working culture. To do this successfully, the leadership needs to encourage and cultivate a lean culture that is based on quality, innovation, and continuous improvement of the healthcare environment. To achieve this, the organization must first understand what the lean approach is all
However, the sustainability of the of lean approach solely depends on an organization’s ability and wiliness to enable the transition to the system. For instance, in health care system, to achieve this, the lean approach needs to assimilate with the patient-centred philosophy, which requires the development of core lean leadership focused on providing a long-term support. Moreover, it requires the implementation of a solid change management approach and develops means of gauging ongoing performance measures. Lastly, it requires a definition of value from a patient point of