How to Use Lean Thinking for the Optimization of Clinical Pathways: A Systematic Review and a Proposed Framework to Analyze Pathways on a System Level.

Lean Thinking and clinical pathways are commonly used concepts to improve healthcare. However, little is known on how to use Lean Thinking for the optimization of pathways or the quantification of both concepts. This study aims to create a framework to analyze pathways with Lean Thinking on a system level, by quantifying the seven wastes, flow and pull. A systematic literature review was performed. Inclusion criteria were the focus of the article on a well-defined group of patients and studied a pathway optimization with Lean Thinking. Data were extracted on measured outcomes, type of intervention and type of researched pathway. Thirty-six articles were included. No articles described the implementation of the Lean Thinking philosophy or studied the development of their people and partners ("4 P" model). Most articles used process optimization tools or problem-solving tools. The majority of the studies focused on process measures. The measures found in the review were used as input for our suggested framework to identify and quantify wastes, flow, and pull in a clinical pathway. The proposed framework can be used to create an overview of the improvement potential of a pathway or to analyze the level of improvement after an enhancement is introduced to a pathway. Further research is needed to study the use of the suggested quantifications.

Malnutrition and risk of malnutrition in patients with stroke: prevalence during hospital stay.

BACKGROUND: Although various studies have shown high prevalence of malnutrition in hospitalized patients with stroke, recent studies on how the nutritional status of patients with acute stroke develops during the first weeks of hospital stay are scarce. Information is lacking concerning the identification of patients with stroke who are at risk of malnutrition during an acute hospital stay, because these patients may have a significant chance to improve their nutritional status. PURPOSE: This study aimed to investigate the prevalence of malnutrition and risk of malnutrition of patients with acute stroke during the first 10 days of hospitalization. METHODS: A prospective, descriptive study was conducted in a neurological department of a university hospital in The Netherlands. Seventy-three patients with acute stroke were included, of which 23 patients could be followed up after 10 days. The nutritional status was determined with the Mini Nutritional Assessment at admission and after 10 days. RESULTS: At admission, 5% of the patients (n = 73) were malnourished, 14% were at risk of malnutrition, and 81% were well nourished. Of the patients who could be followed up (n = 23), at admission, no patients were malnourished, 9% were at risk of malnutrition, and 91% were well nourished; whereas 10 days later, 26% of these patients were malnourished, 39% were at risk of malnutrition, and 35% were well nourished. This means that, within the followed-up group, the proportion of patients with malnutrition or risk of malnutrition increased significantly during hospital stay from 9% to 65%. CONCLUSIONS: Our study shows that the prevalence of malnutrition and risk of malnutrition in patients with acute stroke increases strongly during the first 10 days of admission. Therefore, screening of the nutritional status of these patients throughout this period is highly recommended to enable timely nutritional intervention and nutritional management of these patients.