In recent years the pace of change in health care has accelerated. Some of these important changes include the growing adoption of value-based payment arrangements that require healthcare providers to accept more financial risk for the care they provide patients, increasing requirements for reporting on the safety and quality of care provided, and greater transparency regarding providers’ performance with respect to efficiency, processes of care, patient outcomes, and patient and staff safety. In response, many healthcare organizations have implemented the cultural beliefs and values, tools, and processes of Lean management. Lean is an approach to managing organizations that evolved from the Toyota Production System first developed in the 1950s to eliminate waste and improve quality in the manufacture of automobiles.
CLEAR’s administrative home is the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health. Our initial partners in this effort include Catalysis (formerly the ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value), the Lean Enterprise Institute, and Rona Consulting Group. We welcome you to join in our effort to study Lean in healthcare. Working together, we can provide a more robust evidence base and actionable knowledge to help healthcare organizations meet the transformational challenges they face.
