The ongoing need to do more with less has led many healthcare organizations to adopt the principles of Lean management across the system, from clinical care to facilities planning.
The concept of Lean is that by improving processes and eliminating waste — time, money, supplies, anything that does not add value — an organization can reduce its costs and improve the quality of its product, thus better serving its clients’ needs.
And while the concept is easy enough to understand, implementing it can be anything but. In a blog for Healthcare Design, Rachel Saucier of HKS Architects offers some “Do’s and Don’ts of Lean Facility Planning” to aid those embarking on the Lean journey.
In her blog, Saucier references two construction projects where children’s hospital administrators used lean visioning and operational innovation sessions during the course of designing new facilities. She shares some of the things they learned.
Some of the Do’s: Listen to the customer, learn from your current state — both the good and the bad, and consider program development and operations concurrently with design and construction.
Some Don’ts: Get started too late — if you have the right team in place, operations should inform design, not vice-versa. Deviate from principles of standardization.
View the project as “facility-centric.”
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