Analysis of time variability in Lean Healthcare: a case study in a Brazilian emergency room

Lean Healthcare has often been used as a strategy for operational improvement activities in hospitals. In this sense, this article aims to present a statistical approach applied in existing situations in hospital processes, more specifically, a first aid hospital in Brazil. The TSA (Time Statistical Approach) consists of the construction of confidence intervals for the mean, through the use of the Student t distribution. The results of this application were presented in a case study carried out at a first aid center. The results of the TSA application have shown that variability in activity and wait times can directly affect the improvement efforts involved. The case study also shows that obtaining the standardization of work in hospital environments may require much more effort than in manufacturing environments