Leanness and agility in Healthcare An Exploration of interplay among the Factors and assessment of leanness and agility in Hospitals

Abstract

competitive advantage of healthcare organizations. However, very little attention has been paid with regards to the success and failure of these practices in healthcare settings. Hospital management as well as healthcare practitioners are not well informed about the factors that influence successful incorporation of lean and agile practices in healthcare and the method of assessing leanness and agility level of a healthcare organization. Therefore, this thesis attempts to address the gap by identifying the factors of the phenomenon, determining the interrelationship and rank in the overall system and developing an assessment framework for measurement of leanness and agility in a healthcare organization. By focusing on these dimensions, the contribution of this research work to the body of knowledge is three fold. First, it determines the priority of the factors that influence leanness and agility of a healthcare organization. Second, it explores the leadership characteristics that prepare a healthcare organization for successful incorporation of lean and agile practices. Third, it proposes an assessment framework for measurement of leanness and agility level of a healthcare organization. As an approach to achieve these objectives, an extensive literature review followed by an in-depth discussion with healthcare practitioners has been conducted to identify various factors and parameters of the phenomenon and comprehend their significance in healthcare organizations. Then, total interpretative structural modelling (TISM) has been used as methodology to understand the interplay among the factors and fuzzy logic has been applied to measure leanness and agility level of a hospital. The findings of the research work suggest that organizational leadership is the most important factor in the context of lean implementation in healthcare and modesty, accountability, transparency, proficiency are some of the crucial leadership characteristics that prepare a healthcare organization to assimilate lean practices...