A Lean Implementation Experience in a Uruguayan Healthcare Center

Abstract

Global concern about reducing healthcare expenditure aiming at improving the quality of health service provision has fostered the search for new tools to manage health care. Several international experiences have demonstrated that the use of Continuous Improvement and Lean Thinking in particular, can be adopted by the health care system achieving excellent outcomes. However, only a few experiences have been carried out in the region and none at a country level. This work summarizes the experience in a pediatric emergency room, where different Lean tools were applied. As a result, waiting time was reduced in more than 4 minutes and several opportunities were found to reduce it by another 20% within a short-term time horizon. In conclusion, great improvements can be achieved without additional capital investment.