Lean or Toyota Production System (TPS) is responsible for revolutionizing the auto industry by creating highly reliable and safe cars and trucks. In this course healthcare providers, administrators, engineers, and healthcare professional students will be taught how to apply the principles and tools of Lean to health care. They will learn how to identify and remove of waste, design standardized work, apply 5S, map Value streams, create process maps, conduct rapid improvement events (RIEs), level workflow, use A3 forms and Paredo charts, apply error proofing, and create effective visual controls. The instructional videos minimize Lean technical language, and include patient cases to make the lessons more appealing to students in healthcare. Acknowledging that patients are very different from cars we have carefully adapted Lean to health care and call our system: Patient-centered Healthcare Delivery System (PHDS). The name and abbreviation emphasize two key principles taught in our course: 1. Just like PhDs the scientific method must be continually applied when creating plans to improve our systems of care. 2. All improvements must be made looking through the eyes of patients. Armed with this new knowledge students will be able to design and implement sustainable healthcare delivery system improvements.
From the lesson
Introduction to Applying TPS or Lean to Healthcare
Toyota Production System (TPS) or Lean has allowed Toyota to become the number one automobile manufacturer in the world by progressively improving the quality and reliability of their products. The System of Profound Knowledge developed by the American, W. Edward Deming is the basis for TPS or Lean. This system has now been adapted to healthcare by Virginia Mason Medical Center and Denver Health with exciting results. You will be introduced to the 4 principles of TPS, as well as the TPS House that illustrates how the various tools of TPS fit together to continually add value to the care of patients. The challenges faced by both health systems will be discussed and their approaches to transforming their delivery systems described. When Lean is applied to healthcare, patient care improves, and both patient mortality and the cost of care decrease. Applying Lean to healthcare systems can revolutionize how healthcare is delivered.