Lean in healthcare demands wide employee participation

Lean and continuous improvement methods are no longer solely the realm of manufacturing. Increasingly, procurement specialists, office managers and healthcare administrators are going “Lean” to reap the benefits of optimal performance.

Mark Graban, chief improvement officer for Kai Nexus and author of “Lean Hospitals,” explains that Lean management empowers people to improve and drive organizational savings – a process that is particularly beneficial to hospitals, what with rising healthcare costs and administrative obstacles.

“With the evolution that you see at these really good health systems, it becomes less about doing projects and more about, 'this is the way we do things now, this is the way we think,'” Graban told Med City News. “The goal is to have every employee be a problem solver every day.”

It's also critical for managers and healthcare executives to develop an environment where all employees feel free to contribute suggestions for improvement and, more importantly, that they have an incentive to do so. It may be monetary or merely public recognition, but it's important that any Lean strategy involves all members of an organization.