Tens of thousands of patients die unnecessarily every year as a result of errors and defects in our healthcare processes. Those that survive often pay too much for the privilege. The value stream mapping methods described in Mapping Clinical Value Streams will help you achieve more efficient health care processes and will pave the way to an improved medical system with significantly reduced medical errors and other costly waste.Part of the Lean Tools in Healthcare series, this user-friendly book will help you understand how to use value stream mapping to provide quality, patient-centered care. Value stream mapping is a powerful tool for observing and depicting processes as they truly are and for envisioning and reconfiguring the same processes to eliminate errors and other waste. With this book, you‘ll learn how to:

Map current-state processes
Create a future-state map with processes streamlined through "flow" and "pull"
Manage the rollout of your future state with "A3" project plans

Presented in a highly organized and easy-to-assimilate format, the book includes examples from actual healthcare processes, plus numerous illustrations and margin assists that call your attention to key points. Value stream mapping icons make it easy to see and understand the ebb and flow of healthcare processes. Each chapter also includes a summary for quick review. Throughout the book you will be asked to reflect on questions that will help you apply these concepts and techniques to your own workplace.To be competitive in today‘s marketplace, you cannot afford to leave processes unexamined, or let them become haphazard. You must apply conscious, quality attention to continuously see and fix your healthcare processes. In Mapping Clinical Value Streams, Shingo Prize-winning author Thomas L. Jackson shows you how.


Proven to increase efficiencies in the manufacturing sector, Standard Work has become a key element in reducing process waste, ensuring patient safety, and improving healthcare services. Part of the Lean Tools for Healthcare Series, this reader-friendly book builds on the success of the bestselling, Standard Work for the Shopfloor.

Standard Work for Lean Healthcare explains how to apply this powerful Lean tool to increase patient safety and reduce the cost of providing healthcare services. It illustrates how standardization can help you establish best practices for performing daily work and why it should be the cornerstone for all of your continuous improvement efforts. Presented in an easy-to-assimilate format, the book describes work in terms of cycle time, work in process, takt time, and layout. It also:

  • Defines the key concepts of standard work and explores the essential elements of a continuous improvement culture
  • Provides detailed guidance through the process of creating, maintaining, and improving standards
  • Illustrates the application of standardization and standard work in healthcare with a range of examples
  • Includes access to helpful websites and further reading on standardization, standard work, the 5S System, and Lean healthcare

A joint effort between the Rona Consulting Group and Productivity Press, this book presents invaluable insights from pioneers in Lean thinking to help you avoid common mistakes that can lead to unnecessary wastes of time and resources. Each richly illustrated chapter includes a chapter summary, reflection questions, and margin assists that highlight key terms, how-to steps, and healthcare examples—making this an essential resource for healthcare professionals starting out on their Lean journey.


5S for Healthcare

by Thomas L Jackson

Published 27 July 2017

While there are a growing number of books based on the Toyota Production System, or lean, focused on healthcare, there are very few that detail the tools that make lean more than just a way of thinking and put the methodology into practice.

Based on Hiroyuki Hirano's classic 5 Pillars of the Visual Workplace and modeled after the Shingo Prize-winning Shopfloor Series for Lean Manufacturers, 5S for Healthcare adopts a proven reader-friendly format to impart all the information needed to understand and implement this essential lean methodology. It provides examples and cased studies based on the experiences of the principals involved with the Rona Consulting Group, who were responsible for the groundbreaking implementation of the Toyota Production System at the Virginia Mason Medical Center.

Written to readily assist with hands-on implementation efforts, this volume offers innovative features designed to improve understanding and support application. This includes helpful how-to-steps and practical examples taken directly from the healthcare industry.