Quality Management in a Lean Health Care Environment

Infusing quality in a lean healthcare setting has one ultimate goal--to improve care delivery and, in doing so, increase the value of the experience for the patient. Process quality, patient expectations, and the patient experience are all crucial to understand the entire spectrum of quality within an organization. Obtaining multiple perspectives on quality and collecting actionable data is absolutely essential for health care organizations to take the appropriate actions and countermeasures. Data is critical to a lean organization because it allows decisions to be based on evidence, and those decisions and actions can be monitored, measured, and reviewed. Allowing leaders and frontline workers to easily and readily access data that is relevant to their unit enables those workers to make decisions based on trends and data to improve their daily work--and quality for the patient. These improvements, however, are not possible and cannot be sustained without training, tools, and the support of leadership. The purpose of this book is to provide a blueprint for quality to hospitals, health care organizations, leaders, and frontline workers by providing them with the tools, training, and ideas to address quality within their organization and leverage it to improve the patient experience. The general concepts for an organization will be discussed; however, the responsibilities of individual positions, the decision making processes, and the training for individuals positions will be provided to give readers a more accurate depiction of daily work, the requirements, and decision making