NEWS XXXX
Applying Lean business expertise to improve healthcare
Sarah Lethbridge, director of executive education at Cardiff Business School, says now is the time to invest in redesigning services.
The National Health Service is under extreme pressure. With limited
improvement activity for decades.
budgets and an ever- demanding, ageing population, it is essential that the NHS continually examines itself to ensure that the organisation is as fit for purpose as possible. This involves delivering the best value for money by involving all staff in improvement activity, helping them to identify wasteful practices and seeking to streamline processes to ensure better healthcare for patients.
Commercial organisations have invested heavily in continuous
Companies like Amazon and Nationwide understand that in order to stay competitive, they need to dedicate time to improve, as well as fulfilling the day job. The problem in the NHS is that there rarely appears to be enough time to do the day job – people are too pressured to engage in improvement activity.
The irony is that it’s precisely when organisations are in such crisis situations that they need to dedicate time and resource to dissect their current practices
and redesign services to deliver a more satisfying, safer experience for patients.
Although the NHS is not currently a ‘commercial’ operation, there is no doubt of the need to operate healthcare services as businesses, so it seems that there is much opportunity to adopt some of the practices of business to help the NHS to become more efficient and effective.
It is essential that the NHS adopts these business practices whilst being mindful of the fact that it is a public service for all. Business
Schools can be a great source of
knowledge to help health
providers to start to adopt these improvement ideas.
Operations management para-
digms such as ‘Lean Thinking’ and ‘Six Sigma’ can provide a great framework to bring about radical progressive change in or- der to rise to the challenge cur- rently faced by the NHS.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Linda Hellard T: 02920 875723 E:
HellardL@cardiff.ac.uk W:
Business.cf.ac.uk/executive- education
10 | national health executive Sep/Oct 14
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104