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Research Article: Economic Impact of Lean Healthcare Implementation on the Surgical Process

Date Published: 2024-02-21

Abstract:
Objectives: The objective of this study was to analyse and detail surgical process improvement activities that achieve the highest economic impact. Methods: Over 4 years, a team of technicians and healthcare professionals implemented a set of Lean surgical process improvement projects at Vall d’Hebron University Hospital (VHUH), Barcelona, Spain. Methods employed in the study are common in manufacturing environments and include reducing waiting and changeover time (SMED), reducing first time through, pull, and continuous flow. Projects based on these methods now form part of the daily routine in the surgical process. The economic impact on the hospital’s surgical activity budget was analysed. Results: Process improvements have led to annual operational savings of over EUR 8.5 million. These improvements include better patient flow, better management of information between healthcare professionals, and improved logistic circuits. Conclusions: The current cultural shift towards process management in large hospitals implies shifting towards results-based healthcare, patient-perceived value (VBHC), and value-added payment. A Lean project implementation process requires long-term stability. The reason a considerable number of projects fail to complete process improvement projects is the difficulty involved in establishing the project and improving management routines. Few studies in the literature have investigated the economic impact of implementing Lean management a posteriori, and even fewer have examined actual cases. In this real case study, changes to surgical block management were initiated from stage zero. After being carefully thought through and designed, changes were carried out and subsequently analysed.

Introduction:
Lean healthcare lends a new approach to the process management of surgical blocks and boosts resource efficiency by adapting the process to the high variability in patient waiting lists. The surgical process is one of the main economic outlays in hospital budgets, as well as being a main source of income [1,2]. It is widely known that managing surgical resources is critical to the financial sustainability of hospitals [3]. Improvements to the surgical process have a significant economic impact, and funds that are…

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