Roadmap for the Lean Hospital

This introductory lesson will introduce you to the Lean Hospital Roadmap in more detail, and give you some background on the role of Lean thinking in hospital environments.

In Lesson 1, you will review the Lean Hospital Assessment process including the creation of a Value Stream Map and a Master Plan.

In this lesson, you will learn about the importance of training the leadership team in Lean methods and philosophy.

Lesson 3 covers the creation of a performance dashboard, necessary to track and sustain the progress of our Lean initiative.

This lesson is an introduction to the method of Kaizen and waste in a hospital environment, and how to launch your initial Kaizen events.

In Lesson 5 you will review the need to extend Lean awareness and practice to all hospital staff members, and how we propose to accomplish this.

In Lesson 6 we present the topic of “Hoshin Kanri” or Goal Deployment. Goal Deployment is a powerful set of tools to help you plan and track your improvement projects, and to ensure that your vision and goals are properly aligned with your improvement projects.

In this lesson we extend the work that we have done in our initial Master Plan and Value Stream Mapping activities to the level of the unit or department within the hospital. We have transitioned beyond the pilot stage, and are creating a Lean culture built on continuous improvement. Each department must have a “Target Condition” or next improvement goal, and this phase is where we develop this vision.

We are now launching a series of process improvement or Kaizen events, and implementing the Lean methods we learned earlier in this course. There’s a lot to know, and we’re starting with a basic Lean tool called 7S. 7S is related to organization and housekeeping, and with designing the perfect work environment.

In Lesson 9 you will continue the topic launched in Lesson 8, Kaizen activities in the Lean hospital. In this important lesson you will learn about one of the most important topics and opportunities: the management of medical supplies. The replacement of the Par Level method with the Kanban method is presented in detail.

This lesson continues the application of Kaizen to the OR environment by discussing the Lean method of Quick Changeover.

This lesson focuses on the other kind of Kaizen: individual suggestions. Not all ideas require a Kaizen Event in order to implement it. Most ideas are small and easy to do, and that in fact is what you want. This lesson discusses how to set up a Lean suggestion system.

In Lesson 12, Institute Unit CPI Team, you will learn about how to deploy and sustain lean initiatives at the department level, with the creation of a local Continuous Process Improvement team.

In Lesson 13, Training and Certifying Mentors, you will review the need to training and certify internal Lean resources. These are people within your organization that are passionate about process improvement, are trained in Lean methods, and will act as coaches and mentors to your staff.

Failure to sustain process improvements is worse than doing nothing at all, since all of the time and resources required to make the change will have been ultimately wasted. In Lesson 14 you will review some key methods for ensuring that this does not happen to you and your department.

In this final lesson you will learn about the next Target Condition for the hospital: a Lean Roadmap Compliance Audit that can lead to “certification” as a Lean Hospital. This certification is only another milestone on your journey, but it’s an important one that can act as a motivator for your staff.