Lean Strategies at Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Medical Sciences

Abstract

With recent advancements in the health sector, quality has become a predominant issue. As the demand for healthcare is rising with increase in population base and affordability levels in India, so is the demand for quality healthcare services. The Indian healthcare sector, in recent years has shown a lot of interest in ensuring quality and setting up quality management systems. Lean management emphasizes on reducing waste and defects in processes, bringing in more accuracy, reliability, credibility and customer satisfaction in processes of an organization. This paper summarizes the work which was carried out for more than a year long, which includes Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Medical Sciences, Puttaparthy, India. The study apart from primary data also used various secondary data sources. The study explores lean strategies in the organization. Some of them being, the multispecialty-integrated approach of treating patients, delivery of services by an outreach program which is highly successful in rural areas of one of the districts of Andhra Pradesh, India; extensive use of IT to improvise savings. Although there is evidence of successful lean approaches in Indian healthcare establishments, they are random and scattered. There is still a long way before Indian health care industry adopts lean management on a regular basis. Finally, the study recommends that organizations must try to emphasize on continuous improvement through lean thinking and methodologies. Lean thinking is important as it tries to focus on waste elimination, cost reduction and increased customer satisfaction.