We shouldn't need a waiting room.

Our Lean workshops at Jeroen Bosch Ziekenhuis ended today with a session about the differences between batch and flow processing.  It turns out that many hospital settings are based on batches of patients or tests or procedures.  This is often less efficient than a flow-based process.  It is also a lot less customer-centric.

Frederieke Berendsen (above) started talking about this with regard to out-patient clinics, noting that the waiting rooms are often full of people who arrive in batches (or near-batches) and then often wait to be seen.  She noted that in an efficient system, "We shouldn't need a waiting room."

I immediately awarded her with the astute-observation-of-the-week prize, as she had codified one of the Lean principles in a simple declarative sentence.  I then related the story of Dr. Sami Bahri, the Lean dentist in Jacksonville, Florida, whose "clinic prides itself on minimizing the amount of time patients spend waiting -- whether for an appointment, sitting in the front area, sitting in the procedure chair, or whatever."

Brava to Frederieke--and also to the other people in our workshops--for their attentive participation and excellent observations during our sessions!