First Global Lean Healthcare Summit - 2007
Summit Report
This Summit was a landmark event for the lean healthcare movement around the world.
The event sold out with 320 people (over half from hospitals) attending from 147 organizations from the UK, Ireland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Poland, Switzerland, France, USA, Canada, Brazil, India, South Africa, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand.
Inspiring speakers with many years of experience with lean demonstrated how to move beyond lean tools and rapid improvement events to build a real lean healthcare management system. Others showed the huge potential savings from leaning the supply chain for all kinds of products used in healthcare right to the point of use. It is not an exaggeration to say that delegates went away inspired and energized for action, with a network of new contacts struggling with these same issues across the globe. We will now begin to distil the messages and stories from the Summit for wider dissemination through the global lean healthcare movement.
Presentations
The plenary presentations of the First Global Lean Healthcare Summit are available here ....
Feedback ...
What you said
Below is a cross-section of responses from the feedback questionnaire...
- I enjoyed the Lean HC Summit immensely, made some good connections, and it was well worth the time and money.
- A very meaningful and applicable conference
- Congratulations on a superb event, you must be elated with the result of your efforts!
- I very much enjoyed the conference... it exceeded my high expectation
- I would like to express my thanks for a very stimulating and valuable conference both in terms of what I can learn for our own experiences... and for a deeper understanding of the issues and opportunities within Healthcare.
- ... it has really encouraged us to see progress made at other sites ... because we have gone through the early ‘wildly optimistic that this will make the difference’ phase to the stage where it all looks a bit daunting (about 9 months in).
- Well done on an excellent meeting and good luck with the cause!
- Thanks again for organising such an outstanding Summit... I believe strongly that we need ongoing collaboration and sharing like this in the lean healthcare community ... so that we have a method for sharing information and training materials to avoid the waste of duplicated efforts (while taking care that we do not just use cookie cutter tools). The First Global Lean Healthcare Summit - the information, the leadership, and the energy must be built upon in a ‘continuous flow’ network of sharing.
What Did You Learn?
- It’s all about people and communication. But it’s OK to make mistakes.
- Lean is organisational transformation not project work, it takes organisation, skills, people, resources, and it requires senior leadership.
- The critical role of culture and of the strategic aspects of Lean Lean is a philosophy, a culture, not just tools
- We’re not so different in healthcare!
- The potential is limitless and necessary. Where you start is not as important as starting. The tools are simpler than I expected. Culture is critical to success.
- Lean delivers safer care, greater quality and better outcomes for patients.
- Core skill for our programme should be more about asking questions not telling answers.
- Lean works. It needs leadership from very top.
- Leadership is crucial, the tools are a small part. The message about engagement and culture was very strong.
- Go see, be involved, provide scope for staff to develop and take ownership
From Suppliers
- The importance of culture change and the engagement of top management. The opportunity of supply chain collaboration with hospitals.
- A better understanding of being a healthcare provider
- How extensive the Lean movement is. How much value there is to add. How supply chains must work with hospitals
- It’s about change management and culture