As with my post of yesterday, I was chatting today with a friend who is leading an Acute Trust's drive to achieve Foundation Status and she made a statement which I thought would make an interesting post about Lean Healthcare.

Next week is another interesting week in the world of Lean Healthcare. Mental Health Trusts have started to realise that Lean also has applications in their arena and we are meeting with a further two trusts during the week (although I personally won't be going as I am working for most of the week in an Acute Trust).

Rather than provide some new insight, I thought I would summarise my plans for next week:

Monday: A Scoping Session for a Lean Healthcare Programme in the Acute Sector (focused on Outpatients) and this will be followed by a meeting with the CEO (the Scoping Session is part of a major programme of activity we are undertaking).

Whilst it is essential in most healthcare organisations to reduce their operating costs and ensure they provide a value for money service but it is difficult to engage front-line staff is that is the only focus of your improvement efforts.

Indeed, the best thing to do is to focus your improvement activities on improving patient safety, patient experience and clinical outcomes as improvements in these areas will generate improvements in organisational effectiveness and costs whilst also being more motivational for your front-line staff.