Lean Health Care Discussion

Recently I received an email communication from Helen Zak, Chief Operating Officer of Lean Institute http://www.lean.org/ in Cambridge Mass reminding me of the ongoing debate in Washington D.C. regarding Healthcare and how Six Sigma and other lean process analysis tools might be utilized to save money, increase efficiency with medical claims processing and ultimately make the quality of health care better. We have not heard much discussion about the wonderful lean work being done in the public sector, both in the healthcare setting and in government. In response to this apparent lack of awareness the Lean Enterprise Institute has collaborated with the ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value to form a nonprofit partnership to make sure lean thinking is part of the current discussion and the future state of healthcare in United States. You can learn more by reviewing their statement of values at http://www.healthcarevalueleaders.org/partnership_announcement.pdf

This seemed very important news to share with the Continuous Improvement blog community, especially in these economic times. Certainly lean thinking and tool use is not a panacea for all the ills of government, healthcare and manufacturing, but in most cases incorporating this analysis in the planning process of each of these industries will increase product and service outcomes and assure the highest customer satisfaction. To completely ignore these effective process analysis tools in the health care discussion would be, dare I say, ridiculous.