Hospitals Turning Into Lean Machines by Megan Myers (broken link removed):
The push toward adopting more efficient strategies in health care largely stems from a crucial need to reduce health care costs.
In 2002, health care expenditures in the United States were $1.6 trillion, or 14.9 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product.
Meanwhile, studies have estimated between 30 percent and 60 percent of the costs of providing health care services is waste.
To cut that waste, hospitals are looking at their organizations from a patient’s perspective. That means breaking down the systems and starting fresh.
