Although many people have discovered that Lean is a powerful tool in helping Healthcare Organisations, have you noticed that it contains many of the same elements that earlier improvement programmes consisted of? For example, many of the Lean tools were being promoted by the NHS's Modernisation Agency, admittedly often a little disguised.

I was chatting to a Service Improvement Lead in an Acute Trust today about the tail of activities that remain after a Rapid Improvement Event (RIE). In many organisations the start and end focus is the RIE 'Event' and there is little thought put into closing off activity that remains at the end of the event.