Application of lean manufacturing techniques in the Emergency Department.
BACKGROUND
"Lean" is a set of principles and techniques that drive organizations to continually add value to the product they deliver by enhancing process steps that are necessary, relevant, and valuable while eliminating those that fail to add value. Lean has been used in manufacturing for decades and has been associated with enhanced product quality and overall corporate success.


OBJECTIVE
To evaluate whether the adoption of Lean principles by an Emergency Department (ED) improves the value of emergency care delivered.


METHODS
Beginning in December 2005, we implemented a variety of Lean techniques in an effort to enhance patient and staff satisfaction. The implementation followed a six-step process of Lean education, ED observation, patient flow analysis, process redesign, new process testing, and full implementation. Process redesign focused on generating improvement ideas from frontline workers across all departmental units. Value-based and operational outcome measures, including patient satisfaction, expense per patient, ED length of stay (LOS), and patient volume were compared for calendar year 2005 (pre-Lean) and periodically after 2006 (post-Lean).


RESULTS
Patient visits increased by 9.23% in 2006. Despite this increase, LOS decreased slightly and patient satisfaction increased significantly without raising the inflation adjusted cost per patient.


CONCLUSIONS
Lean improved the value of the care we delivered to our patients. Generating and instituting ideas from our frontline providers have been the key to the success of our Lean program. Although Lean represents a fundamental change in the way we think of delivering care, the specific process changes we employed tended to be simple, small procedure modifications specific to our unique people, process, and place. We, therefore, believe that institutions or departments aspiring to adopt Lean should focus on the core principles of Lean rather than on emulating specific process changes made at other institutions.
Dickson
Eric W
EW
Department of Emergency Medicine, University of Iowa Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine, Iowa City, Iowa, USA.
Singh
Sabi
S
Cheung
Dickson S
DS
Wyatt
Christopher C
CC
Nugent
Andrew S
AS
D017598:Efficiency, Organizational; D006284:Health Plan Implementation; D006780:Hospitals, Rural; D006801:Humans; D015146:Midwestern United States; D017060:Patient Satisfaction; D017064:Process Assessment, Health Care; D017749:Total Quality Management / Q000379:methods*; D014193:Trauma Centers / Q000458:organization & administration*