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Waste not, want not: Leading the lean health‐care journey at Seattle Children's Hospital
Author(s) -
Hagan Pat
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
global business and organizational excellence
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.227
H-Index - 16
eISSN - 1932-2062
pISSN - 1932-2054
DOI - 10.1002/joe.20375
Subject(s) - health care , work (physics) , business , nursing , lean manufacturing , quality management , manufacturing sector , quality (philosophy) , medical emergency , medicine , operations management , marketing , political science , engineering , economics , mechanical engineering , international economics , philosophy , service (business) , epistemology , law
Of the work conducted by health‐care practitioners, 95 percent has no value to the patients they serve—an astounding fact given the spiraling costs of medical care. How well a health‐care organization delivers care lies in the crucial remaining 5 percent. Borrowing techniques from the manufacturing sector, Seattle Children's Hospital in Washington has embarked on a continuous improvement initiative that has streamlined the hospital's myriad processes at all levels to ensure high‐quality and effective delivery of services. As this case study shows, the organization, its staff members at all levels, and its patients are all beneficiaries of the hospital's healthy focus on continuous performance improvement. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.