Investigating emergency room service quality using lean manufacturing

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate a lean manufacturing metric called Takt time as a benchmark evaluation measure to evaluate a public hospital's service quality. Lean manufacturing is an established managerial philosophy with a proven track record in industry. A lean metric called Takt time is applied as a measure to compare the relative efficiency between two emergency departments (EDs) belonging to the same public hospital. Outcomes guide managers to improve patient services and increase hospital performances.

Design/methodology/approach: The patient treatment lead time within the hospital's two EDs (one department serves male and the other female patients) are the study's focus. A lean metric called Takt time is used to find the service's relative efficiency.

Findings: Findings show that the lean manufacturing metric called Takt time can be used as an effective way to measure service efficiency by analyzing relative efficiency and identifies bottlenecks in different departments providing the same services.

Originality/value: The paper presents a new procedure to compare relative efficiency between two EDs. It can be applied to any healthcare facility.

Keywords: Benchmarking; Emergency room; Lean manufacturing; Takt time.