BC Ministry of Health Lean in British Columbia’s Health Sector: Annual Report 2010-11 · 1 Preface

In the health sector, Lean is a patient-focused approach to systematically eliminating waste in health care organizational processes in order to improve quality, productivity and efficiency. In essence, Lean involves mapping out the patient journey from the time they enter the system until they exit the system in order to identify activities that provide value to the patient and eliminate those that add no value (waste). Once wasteful activities are removed, remaining steps are made more efficient and integrated so that services flow smoothly. This means that services are “pulled ” only when needed by patients. The final step of Lean is the pursuit of continuous improvement by repeating the cycle to get it more and more streamlined. In November 2010, Leadership Council1 decided to support the use of Lean within the health authorities as a process redesign tool. One of the strategic actions or Key Result Areas (KRAs) for achieving the Ministry of Health’s Innovation and Change Agenda is concerned with reducing waste and increasing value in the health care sector using Lean methods. A key deliverable for this KRA is an annual report for Leadership Council that outlines how Lean has been used in the province. This report presents seven case studies tha