Lean Thinking for Emerging Healthcare Leaders

Introduction

The United States spends more per capita ($8,000 per person) and percentage of GDP per capita (17.4 percent) than any other nation in the world on healthcare. Yet on average the health of the American public is in the lower quadrant of nearly every healthcare quality measure when compared to most of the developed world. Clearly something must be done.

The purpose of this book is to attack the problem from the perspective of the practicing front-line healthcare providers. Most of current attempts to solve this problem are made by administrators instead of providers, which causes two major issues:

1. Administrators have limited knowledge of the actual situation in healthcare systems and processes. Many of them reside in ivory towers ...