title: Lean Strategies in the Operating Room.
abstract: Lean strategies can be readily applied to health care in general and operating rooms specifically. The emphasis is on the patient as the customer, respect and engagement of all providers, and leadership from management. The strategy of lean is to use continuous improvement to eliminate waste from the care process, leaving only value-added activities. This iterative process progressively adds the steps of identifying the 7 common forms of waste (transportation, inventory, motion, waiting, overproduction, overprocessing, and defects), 5S (sort, simplify, sweep, standardize, sustain), visual controls, just-in-time processing, level-loaded work, and built-in quality to achieve the highest quality of patient care.
authors.affiliation: Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine, Oregon Health & Science University, 3181 Southwest Sam Jackson Park Road, Mail Code KPV5A, Portland, OR 97239, USA.
authors.forename: Stephen T
authors.initials: ST
authors.lastname: Robinson
authors.affiliation: Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine, Oregon Health & Science University, 3181 Southwest Sam Jackson Park Road, Mail Code KPV5A, Portland, OR 97239, USA. Electronic address: kirschje@ohsu.edu.
authors.forename: Jeffrey R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Kirsch
mesh_terms: D017598:Efficiency, Organizational; D006801:Humans; D007857:Leadership; D009873:Operating Rooms / Q000458:organization & administration*; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care / Q000379:methods*
keywords: 5S; Just in time production; Leader standard work; Lean management; Level loading; Standard work; Waste