title: Managerial process improvement: a lean approach to eliminating medication delivery.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Statistical evidence shows that medication errors are a major cause of injuries that concerns all health care oganizations. Despite all the efforts to improve the quality of care, the lack of understanding and inability of management to design a robust system that will strategically target those factors is a major cause of distress. The paper aims to discuss these issues.
  
  
  METHODS
  Achieving optimum organizational performance requires two key variables; work process factors and human performance factors. The approach is that healthcare administrators must take in account both variables in designing a strategy to reduce medication errors. However, strategies that will combat such phenomena require that managers and administrators understand the key factors that are causing medication delivery errors.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The authors recommend that healthcare organizations implement the Toyota Production System (TPS) combined with human performance improvement (HPI) methodologies to eliminate medication delivery errors in hospitals.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Despite all the efforts to improve the quality of care, there continues to be a lack of understanding and the ability of management to design a robust system that will strategically target those factors associated with medication errors. This paper proposes a solution to an ambiguous workflow process using the TPS combined with the HPI system.
authors: Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Illinois, USA.
authors: Aftab
authors: A
authors: Hussain
authors: LaShonda M
authors: LM
authors: Stewart
authors: Patrick A
authors: PA
authors: Rivers
authors: George
authors: G
authors: Munchus
mesh_terms: D002983:Clinical Competence; D017598:Efficiency, Organizational; D004777:Environment; D006739:Hospital Administration; D006801:Humans; D008510:Medication Systems, Hospital / Q000458:organization & administration; D058996:Quality Improvement / Q000458:organization & administration*; D011787:Quality of Health Care / Q000458:organization & administration
keywords: Accountability; Business process re-engineering/patient focused care; Clinical effectiveness; Continuous quality improvement; Employee involvement; Improvement models