Use of lean in the emergency department: a case series of 4 hospitals.

STUDY OBJECTIVE: We describe the effects of Lean, a process improvement strategy pioneered by Toyota, on quality of care in 4 emergency departments (EDs). METHODS: Participants in 2 academic and 2 community EDs that instituted Lean as their single process improvement strategy made observations of their behavioral changes over time. They also measured the following metrics related to patient flow, service, and growth from before and after implementation: time from ED arrival to ED departure (length of stay), patient satisfaction, percentage of patients who left without being seen by a physician (2 EDs), the time from ordering to reading radiographs (1 ED), and changes in patient volume. RESULTS: One year post-Lean, length of stay was reduced in 3 of the EDs despite an increase in patient volume in all 4. Each observed an increase of patient satisfaction lagging behind by at least a year. The narratives indicate that the closer Lean implementation was to the original Toyota principles, the better the initial outcomes. The immediate results were also greater in the EDs in which the frontline workers were actively participating in the Lean-driven process changes. A factor that considerably affected the outcomes in the second and third year postimplementation was the level of continuous leadership commitment to Lean. CONCLUSION: Lean principles adapted to the local culture of care delivery can lead to behavioral changes and sustainable improvements in quality of care metrics in the ED. These improvements are not universal and are affected by leadership and frontline workforce engagement.

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. OBJECTIVES: 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.