ABSTRACT
Lean is helping organizations improve patient flow in far less expensive ways. Smooth, steady flow through a value stream should be a primary goal of a health system. That might mean the smooth flow of support products, or it might mean the smooth flow of patients through the hospital and their continuum of care. In some hospitals, surgery patients wait for hours because they are all instructed to arrive first thing in the morning. Lean hospitals might view slow periods during the year as opportunities to more actively market elective procedures in an attempt to level out the overall load on the hospital and its resources, shifting cross-trained personnel between the emergency departments and the operating room as demand shifts. Many hospitals have applied Lean methods to multiple areas of the laboratory, including the clinical lab, transfusion services, microbiology, and anatomic pathology. Additionally, the hospital recognized direct financial savings from the Lean efforts.
