What does "lean healthcare" primarily aim to achieve?

Lean healthcare primarily aims to minimize waste and improve processes within the healthcare system. This approach is rooted in the principles of Lean manufacturing, which emphasize efficiency, flexibility, and value creation. By streamlining operations, healthcare organizations can reduce unnecessary steps, utilize resources more effectively, and ultimately enhance patient care without increasing costs.

Focusing on minimizing waste involves identifying and eliminating activities that do not add value to patient outcomes. This can include reducing wait times, limiting redundancies, and optimizing staff workflows. By improving processes, lean healthcare supports the delivery of high-quality care while ensuring that resources are used judiciously, which can lead to better patient satisfaction and organizational performance.

The incorrect options do not align with the core objectives of lean healthcare. For instance, maximizing paperwork contradicts the goal of minimizing waste, while increasing the number of staff does not directly relate to improving efficiency or processes. Standardizing patient visits might be a component of process improvement, but lean healthcare’s broader focus is on the overall reduction of waste across all operations, not just standardization.