Implementing operations strategy through Lean processes within health care

Abstract

Healthcare is perhaps the most personal and important service people experience, yet is not a service that people necessarily seek (Berry and Bendapudi 2007). Although the focus tends towards the technical aspect of service provision, 'patient experience' transcends a purely medical and organisational perspective (Makarem and Al-Amin 2014). Providing healthcare services in an environment where patients are increasingly experience-aware and evertighter financial constraints prevail, presents challenges both for service design and performance in operations management (Zomerdijk and Voss 2010, Dey et al. 2013, Tax et al. 2013). This highlights the important role of operations strategy because it becomes the means by which a range of operations management initiatives can be defined and implemented within organisations (Hill and Hill 2011), including healthcare providers. 'Lean' is one of these operations management initiatives that has received significant attention from both practitioners and scholars within service environments (Panchak 2003,

Implementation of lean in health care environments: an update of systematic reviews

“…Other authors suggested that Lean should be developed holistically in healthcare (Matthias & Brown, 2016;Mazzocato et al, 2010) exploring creativity and innovation-related approaches (Hoerl & Gardner, 2010). Thus, as future recommendations for studies, it would be important to develop works related to different dimensions and type of hospitals in different world regions, as these characteristics may affect the nature of the process and the demand for health care, thus guiding different approaches for continuous and sustained improvement interventions.…”

An exploratory study into the use of Lean Six Sigma to reduce medication errors in the Norwegian public healthcare context

“…As Radnor (2010) showed, 51% of process improvement methodologies used in service sectors focuses on Lean and 35% on health services. The implementation of Lean is favoured by healthcare managers worldwide as it potentially combines cost reduction with an outstanding standard of healthcare to the patient (Matthias and Brown, 2016), is easy to understand and straightforward to use by healthcare staff (Curatolo et al, 2014).…”

Operationalising lean in healthcare: the impact of professionalism

“…This paper responds to ongoing calls made in literature, to determine the impact of medical professionals on Lean implementations, through the lens of professionalism. This continued uncertainty over the progress of Lean in healthcare has resulted in a transition of the research focus from the operational aspects of the work environment (Holden, 2011;Costa and Godinho Filho, 2016) to softer practices including development of employees' capabilities through employee empowerment and engagement (Drotz and Poksinska, 2014;Matthias and Brown, 2016;Poksinska et al, 2017;Bortolotti et al, 2018).…”

“…This gives rise to Lean replicating the silo nature of healthcare due to the lack of studies focusing on service wide Lean implementations (Brandão de Souza, 2009;Costa and Godinho Filho, 2016;Lindsay and Kumar, 2016). Further to this, many of these positively reported studies involved healthcare organisations at their early stages of Lean implementation, rather than on results and Lean sustainability over the longer term (Burgess and Radnor, 2012;Mazzocato et al, 2014;Matthias and Brown, 2016). This silo and small project approach observed to date has overly focused on Lean as a tool kit methodology for problem solving rather than considering Lean as a philosophy (Matthias and Buckle, 2016).…”

“…This silo and small project approach observed to date has overly focused on Lean as a tool kit methodology for problem solving rather than considering Lean as a philosophy (Matthias and Buckle, 2016). This exploration of the technical or operational aspects of Lean has neglected to unpick Lean in healthcare fully through a balanced sociotechnical lens (Matthias and Brown, 2016;Bortolotti et al, 2018).…”