ABSTRACT
The introduction of Lean is progressing swiftly, but requires effort. It keeps Smith and her team leaders extremely busy, and the time demands of the Lean sessions are also felt in the workplace. It is already leading to concrete results, however. These show the positive effect of Lean is signicant: quality of care in the emergency room (ER) is increasing with leaps and jumps. This is reected in particular by the average time patients spend in the ER: down from 5½ hours to 4½ hours. The number of medication errors has also dropped by 20%. Moving forward with Lean requires coordination with other departments-the ER does not operate in a vacuum. The rst attempt-consulting the pharmacy-was a miserable failure (see Chapter 2). A careful approach is therefore required.
