University of Michigan looks to lean principles for system-wide improvements
Author: Gardner, Paula
This article from the Ann Arbor Business Review features the lean adoption efforts at the University of Michigan Health System, featuring Dr. Jack Billi, the associate vice president for medical affairs at the University of Michigan and an associate dean at U-M's medical school. U-M formally adopted lean in 2004 as their overall improvement methodology. "(Our goal) is to use lean thinking as a business strategy for how we will accomplish ... the best quality, highest safety, most efficient, most appropriate and best customer service that we can," he said. One area of success came at MedSport, where appointments used to take 23 days due to numerous steps the staff had to take. After undergoing scrutiny of the lean principles, that days-long effort was reduced to 2.5 minutes and one phone call for patients.
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