Process Improvement using Value Stream Mapping – A Lean Thinking in Indian Health Care Sector

Abstract

Incidents and quality problems are a prime reason why health care leaders are calling to redesign health care delivery. With rising pressure on Healthcare providers, to reduce costs and improve quality, an increasing number of organizations are looking to “Lean” tools and techniques as a breakthrough solution for performance improvement. In this paper, an overview of lean thinking and its implementation in a hospital located in the southern part of India is been presented. It describes about the process improvement in hospitals using lean principles which can have a positive impact on productivity, cost, quality and timely delivery of services.

Keywords: process improvement, quality service, value added and non value added activities.