The Hospital and Clinic Improvement Handbook

Using Lean and the Theory of Constraints for Better Healthcare Delivery

Boaz Ronen, Joseph S. Pliskin, Shimeon Pass, and Foreword by Donald M. Berwick

A practical guide to how operations management can be leveraged to rapidly improve value and performance in health care
Unique and expert application of Lean and TOC to health care, with an emphasis on simplicity and applicability to any clinical organization
Distills the authors' insights gathered from implementing these tools and concepts in over 160 organizations across the world
Presents tools and applications that can easily yield significant improvements in any performance measure using existing resources
Highly relevant to the ongoing healthcare crisis in the US, which promises to place added importance on value and cost-effectiveness in health care institutions

The Hospital and Clinic Improvement Handbook

Using Lean and the Theory of Constraints for Better Healthcare Delivery

Boaz Ronen, Joseph S. Pliskin, Shimeon Pass, and Foreword by Donald M. Berwick

Description

The essential healthcare guide to doing more with existing resources

The healthcare industry faces foundational challenges to how it sustains itself. As the gap between cost and revenue continues to widen, and as cost-effectiveness remains an elusive imperative, the question persists: how can healthcare organizations do more with the same resources?

The Hospital and Clinic Improvement Handbook is a practical guide to how operations management — in particular Lean and the Theory of Constraints (TOC) — can rapidly advance value and performance in any healthcare organization. Utilizing a systems approach that will be relevant for healthcare managers and executives, it unpacks and demystifies concepts such as performance measures, operations, quality, cost accounting, pricing, and value enhancement, all as they relate to eliminating waste and non-value-adding activities.

Enriched with dozens of examples and building on the authors' experience teaching and refining these concepts for healthcare, this text is an essential guide for executives and managers across the industry.

The Hospital and Clinic Improvement Handbook

Using Lean and the Theory of Constraints for Better Healthcare Delivery

Boaz Ronen, Joseph S. Pliskin, Shimeon Pass, and Foreword by Donald M. Berwick

Foreword
Donald M. Berwick, M.D.
Preface
1. The Modern Healthcare Environment
2. Principles of Management in the Dynamic Healthcare Environment
3. The Pareto Rule, the Focusing Table, and the Focusing Matrix
4. The Seven Focusing Steps of the Theory of Constraints (TOC)
5. Constraint Management in a Bottleneck Environment
6. Constraint Management under a Market Constraint
7. Focused Current Reality Tree (fCRT)
8. Resolving Managerial Conflicts
9. The "Efficiencies Syndrome"
10. The "Evils" of Long Response Times
11. Reducing Response Times
12. The Complete Kit Concept
13. Performance Measures
14. The Effects of Variability and Uncertainty
15. The Evils of Traditional Cost-Accounting
16. Global Decision Making (GDM)
17. Quality Management and Process Control
18. Creating Value for Healthcare Organizations
19. Implementation and the Process of Ongoing Improvement (POOGI)
20. Success Stories

The Hospital and Clinic Improvement Handbook

Using Lean and the Theory of Constraints for Better Healthcare Delivery

Boaz Ronen, Joseph S. Pliskin, Shimeon Pass, and Foreword by Donald M. Berwick

Author Information

Boaz Ronen, Professor Emeritus of Healthcare Management and Value Creation, Coller of School Management, Tel Aviv University, Joseph S. Pliskin, rofessor Emeritus of Healthcare Management and Industrial Engineering and Management, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Shimeon Pass, Private Consultant, and Foreword by Donald M. Berwick, President Emeritus and Senior Fellow, Institute for Healthcare Improvement

Boaz Ronen, PhD, is Professor Emeritus of Healthcare Management and Value Creation at the Coller of School Management, Tel Aviv University.

Joseph S. Pliskin, PhD, is Professor Emeritus of Healthcare Management and Industrial Engineering and Management, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and Adjunct Professor of Health Policy and Management, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Shimeon Pass, MBA, MSc, is a management consultant whose work applies the philosophy and tools of the focused-management methodology, Lean, and TOC to the healthcare, technology, service, retail, and non-profit sectors.

The Hospital and Clinic Improvement Handbook

Using Lean and the Theory of Constraints for Better Healthcare Delivery

Boaz Ronen, Joseph S. Pliskin, Shimeon Pass, and Foreword by Donald M. Berwick

Reviews and Awards

"The handbook does a fantastic job of setting the stage for the need for improvement in healthcare, and then laying out the possible plan to achieve it...This is a solid book for several improvement topics as applied in a healthcare setting." - Doody's

The Hospital and Clinic Improvement Handbook

Using Lean and the Theory of Constraints for Better Healthcare Delivery

Boaz Ronen, Joseph S. Pliskin, Shimeon Pass, and Foreword by Donald M. Berwick

From Our Blog

Better health care delivery: doing more with existing resources

The healthcare sector faces challenges which are constantly escalating. Populations are growing worldwide and so is the share of the elderly in society. There is a constant proliferation of new medications, diagnostic methods, medical procedures and equipment, and know-how. This huge progress greatly improves the quality of medical treatment but at the same time increases its costs. Governments and authorities are allocating ever growing budgets to healthcare systems but the increased budgets do not cover the increased costs of providing quality healthcare to the public.

Posted on April 13, 2018

Read the blog post