ABSTRACT
This chapter describes several important techniques that support the smooth flow required for just-in-time (JIT) in healthcare. The JIT approach cannot succeed in a clinic or hospital that is cluttered, disorganized, or dirty. Poor workplace conditions give rise to all sorts of waste, including extra motion to avoid obstacles; time spent searching for needed items; delays due to process interruptions; and increased risk of defects and harm to patients, clinicians, and staff. Visual management of healthcare processes is an important support for JIT. Lean management is the decentralized organization of management control structures to promote the discovery, correction, anticipation, and prevention of process defects and the errors and abnormalities that result in defects, patient waits, and other process delays. In the broadest sense, Lean healthcare management can be explained in terms of five principles that define what they may call the DNA of Lean healthcare management: standard work, autonomation, flow production, Plan–Do–Check–Act, and Socratic Method.
