How Can the Lean Improvement Cycle Improve Quality Issues in Healthcare?

Managing a healthcare facility is a lot of work with many different moving parts. Improving the quality of care that is provided while also making the facility more efficient is an important goal. One way that this can be done is by using the lean improvement cycle to improve the overall quality of the way things are done within a facility. Learning more about how this concept can be implemented in a healthcare facility is important for all managers or leaders in this industry.

The lean improvement cycle is a type of continuous improvement that allows a team to constantly be working to improve the way that things are done. There are quite a few different ways that this can be implemented, but they all follow the steps of identifying a process or procedure that can be improved, coming up with a potential way to improve it, implementing that idea, and then reviewing the results. After reviewing the results, the process will start over based off of the new information to see how further progress can be made.

When using this type of improvement cycle in healthcare, it is important to make sure that the patient is always kept at the center of all changes that are made. Providing them with the best level of care possible is not only the right thing to do, but it will also end up being the most efficient way to operate in the long run.

While every process improvement effort that is made can be beneficial, it is important to collect careful data throughout the improvement cycle. This will help to show what is effective and what is not. It will also allow a facility to back process changes out if they are found to cause more harm than good.