Lean management and the psychosocial work environment

"As health care struggles to meet increasing demands with limited resources, Lean has become a popular management approach. It has mainly been studied in relation to health care performance. The empirical evidence as to how Lean affects the psychosocial work environment has been contradictory."

Interactions between lean management and the psychosocial work environment in a hospital setting - a multi-method study
W Ulhassan, U von Thiele Schwarz, J Thor, H Westerlund
BMC Health Services Research 2014, 14:480

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The patient safety culture as perceived by staff before and after introducing a flow-oriented working model

"The aim of the present study was to describe the patient safety culture in an ED at two different hospitals before and after a Quality improvement (QI) project that was aimed to enhance patient safety."

The patient safety culture as perceived by staff at two different emergency departments before and after introducing a flow-oriented working model with team triage and lean principles: a repeated cross-sectional study
L Burström, A Letterstål, M Engström, A Berglund, M Enlund
BMC Health Services Research 2014, 14:296

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How to get better value health care for patients

"The available evidence indicates a range of opportunities to make significant recurrent productivity gains across the NHS by 2021 and beyond."

Closing the NHS funding gap: how to get better value health care for patients
Monitor
October 2013

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Continuous quality improvement

"Shared governance and continuous quality improvement (CQI) are concepts that have been re-introduced into the healthcare sector over recent decades through several iterations for the purpose of empowering point-of-care staff."

Continuous quality improvement: a shared governance model that maximizes agent-specific knowledge
V Burkosi, J Yoon
Nursing Leadership, 26 (Special Issue) May 2013: 7-16

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Lean management also improves primary care

"The management principles used to improve quality and efficiency at Toyota Motor Corp. and other manufacturers also are linked to better delivery of cardiac care and lower death rates from heart attacks, according to research that demonstrates for the first time how well the so-called lean production system functions across a wide swath of U.S. hospitals."

Cardiac treatment improves after taking page from Toyota playbook
KB O'Reilly
American Medical News
April 2013

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Service improvement in blood sciences

"The vision for the NHS pathology services puts patients first by providing services which are:

• clinically excellent;
• responsive to users;
• cost effective; and
• integrated."

Service improvement in blood sciences: how to improve quality, delivery and efficiency for laboratory providers and their customers
NHS Improvement - Diagnostics
January 2013

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How does lean work in emergency care?

"Improvements in waiting and lead times (19-24%) were achieved and sustained in the two years following lean-inspired changes to employee roles, staffing and scheduling, communication and coordination, expertise, workspace layout, and problem solving."

How does lean work in emergency care? A case study of a lean-inspired intervention at the Astrid Lindgren Children's Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden
P Mazzocato, RJ Holden, M Brommels, H Aronsson, U Backman, M Elg, J Thor
BMC Health Services Research, 2012, 12:28

Read more here.

How does lean work in emergency care?

"Improvements in waiting and lead times (19-24%) were achieved and sustained in the two years following lean-inspired changes to employee roles, staffing and scheduling, communication and coordination, expertise, workspace layout, and problem solving."

How does lean work in emergency care? A case study of a lean-inspired intervention at the Astrid Lindgren Children’s Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden
P Mazzocato, RJ Holden, M Brommels, H Aronsson, U Backman, M Elg, J Thor
BMC Health Services Research, 2012, 12:28

Read more here.