Can lean principles applies for Hospital and Private Clinic
Virginia Manson Medical Center, in Seattle, Washington, has been sending senior executive, doctors and managers to manufacturing plants in Japan to learn about “lean” first hand. In a Hitachi Air-conditioning plant, they learnt to record work flow, measure cycle times, document process flow and most importantly about the “Toyota Production System”. They discovered that health care has many steps and concepts similar to production of goods.
Today, every employee in Virginia Manson is required to attend the lean class and they are encouraged to participate in Rapid Process Improvement Weeks, where cross functional teams work together to seek ways to eliminate Wastes and Non Value Added steps and fix the broken processes.
In between 2002-2004, 175 Rapid Process Improvement Weeks (Kaizen event) has been conducted. The results are tabulated below:-
Virginia Manson is an integrated health care provider which includes a 336-beds hospital, employing 400 physicians and 5000 employees.
We collected some of the well known cases here:
- Virginia Manson Medical Center, Washington, USA
- Theda Care Inc, Wisconsin, USA
- Airedale NHS Hospital, Yorkshire, UK
- Flinders Medical Services, Adelaide, Australia
- Bolton NHS Hospital, UK
Pamalex Consulting provides dedicated Lean Transformation program for hospitals and other health care providers. Contact us at enquiry@pamalex.com to find out more.
