ABSTRACT
We learned an enormous amount from the Emergency Department work. It helped us understand what a value stream is in Health Care and the impact that redesigning processes along value streams can make. It demonstrated the central role played by effective governance, and how governance provides authorization for Process Redesign. It demonstrated how mapping and tracking builds permission, and how any one improvement is merely a platform for the next. This case study used all of that learning, and more besides. It is presented at some length, because it was an important evolutionary step in the development of a Lean understandings of basic hospital functions and activities. It is also a further example of a major program initiated in response to a safety concern.
