Nearly 40 healthcare leaders from across the country and Canada took a walk to the HHC "Gemba" on October 18th to learn how New York City public hospitals are successfully applying the "Lean" principles of the Toyota Production System -- known as Breakthrough at HHC -- to improve healthcare delivery through Lean thinking. "Gemba" is the Japanese word for real or actual place. And in healthcare, going to the Gemba, means going to the front lines of patient care to see first hand how a process works.

As part of HHC’s 3rd Annual Breakthrough Conference, members of the Healthcare Value Leaders Network (HVLN) from Canada, California, Boston, the Cleveland Clinic, Michigan and Wisconsin, went to the Gemba at Kings County, Metropolitan and Bellevue Hospitals to learn about Lean successes in the emergency department, behavioral health, peri-operative services, ambulatory care and inpatient medicine departments. The three-day conference also included a day of speakers from around the country who have implemented Lean continuous improvement and process redesign to identify and eliminate waste and create more value for patients and staff.

HHC began to implement the Breakthrough performance improvement system nearly four years ago and has already realized more than $200 million in new revenues and cost savings.

“Breakthrough has proven itself successful as a primary means to engage our workforce to help root out waste, identify and solve problems and build our organization’s capacity for adaptive change to better enable us to navigate the turbulent years ahead,” HHC President Alan D. Aviles said.

December 2011