Lean Healthcare: Trends and forthcoming directions

Many corporations in the manufacturing sector, such as Toyota, have enjoyed enormous economic and marketable achievement by employing lean principles towards identifying value for the customer, eradicating waste in the production manner, and providing high quality goods. Lean inspires involvement by the frontline workers to engender ideas, legislate fluctuations in workflow, and continually chase excellence in learning systems. Modern healthcare administrations encompass complex progressions and are in noteworthy requirement of enhancement in the domains of safe, effective, opportune, and suitable delivery of care to patients. It is these complex processes that are targets for improvement using the systematic and scientific lean approach. Lean has been applied in many healthcare establishments within the United States and other nations. From reduced patient wait times to enriched patient output in emergency sections to more efficient as well as rounding practices, lean has improved the quality of healthcare delivery in institutions that teach its principles and goals. Through going and perceiving where the work is implemented, asking why to determine the root cause of problems, and respecting and supporting involved parties, organizations may have a constructive effect on the way healthcare is delivered. With this regards, this paper embarks on investigating the most recent works done in the area of lean healthcare and classifies the directions which can be implemented in the future.

Lean approach; Healthcare systems; Operational excellence; Review