CMMU Faculty's Latest Publication on Lean Strategy for Healthcare Service Operations

Dr. Prattana Punnakitikashem, CMMU faculty member, together with colleagues from Thammasat University has studied the strategy to enhancing healthcare service operations. Lean strategy was particularly selected as it recently gained much attention from health care industry. This work has been published in Chulalongkorn Review [Vol. 22 (85) pp. 81-98] under the title of “Enhancing Healthcare Service Operations by Adopting Lean Strategy”.

The purpose of the paper is to describe an application of concepts of lean thinking in health care delivery system. Literature is reviewed and integrated from health care sector and manufacturing sector in order to understand how lean thinking is adapted to health care services. Furthermore, the case studies of successful implementation of lean principles in hospitals are demonstrated. Case studies revealed that hospitals can adopt concepts of lean thinking to enhance their health care service operations. Generally, lean strategy is applicable in health care settings to reduce all wastes, increase efficiency, and increase value-added activities to patients’ service. Nevertheless, it is argued that lean implementation is needed to be balanced with other indicators in order to obtain the optimal performance.