Developing a Lean Based Model for a Hospital Pharmacy Environment

Lean strategies have become necessary in healthcare due primarily to two factors: a demand for efficiency and a need to reduce medical error. The case for the necessity of a lean program is based on trends of increasing costs and decreasing revenues resulting from government intervention. Profit margin per patient has been reduced, and therefore more patients per time period must be seen in order to meet profitability goals. Preventable medical error is shown to be a leading cause of death.

Current research in the area of hospital and healthcare efficiency proves that a parallel exists between healthcare efficiency today and the state of efficiency in manufacturing during the late 70’s and early 80’s. In the 70’s and 80’s, MRP technology came into vogue as a means for attacking complicated problems with expensive, complicated, technology-based solutions. Today, many hospitals hope to solve their efficiency and human error problems by implementing computer based delivery, order-filling, and data systems. Better manufacturers made a move away from complicated solutions, toward lean practices focused on instead of simplifying the problems; healthcare should then do the same.

A generic lean methodology geared toward the differing nuances of healthcare is developed. Lean is offered as a solution to both efficiency and medical error (on the basis that visual systems reduce error and that lean reduces stress, a major contributor to human error). A connection between stress and lean has been found by prior research and is taken a step further and connected with human error. This is based on research showing that stress cases the potential for human error in skilled workers to increase by 2-5 times.