Lean-Led Hospital Design: Creating the Efficient Hospital of the Future

Instead of building new hospitals that import old systems and problems, the time has come to reexamine many of our ideas about what a hospital should be. Can a building foster continuous improvement? How can we design it to be flexible and useful well into the future? How can we do more with less?

Answering these questions and more, Lean-Led Hospital Design: Creating the Efficient Hospital of the Future explains how hospitals can be built to increase patient safety and reduce wait times while eliminating waste, lowering costs, and easing some of healthcare’s most persistent problems. It supplies a simplified timeline of architectural planning—from start to finish—to guide readers through the various stages of the Lean design development philosophy, including Lean architectural design and Lean work design. It includes examples from several real healthcare facility design and construction projects, as well as interviews with hospital leaders and architects.

About the Authors

Naida Grunden is a Lean healthcare consultant and has been a business and technical writer for over 25 years. She speaks and teaches nationally and internationally (Denmark, Cuba) on the application of Toyota-based Lean techniques in healthcare. Her clients include Captain Sullenberger, Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative, Healthcare Performance Partners, and Global Link.

Grunden is the author of The Pittsburgh Way to Efficient Healthcare published by CRC Press. She was also responsible for launching the PRHI Executive Summary, a monthly newsletter published by the Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative, when she was Director of Communications. In Grunden received the 2006 Challenge Award from the American College of Clinical Engineering for her article, "Industrial Techniques Help Reduce Hospital-Acquired Infection," in Biomedical Instrumentation and Technology magazine. She has published numerous articles for various healthcare publications and was the keynote speaker for the HIMSS 2010 Conference awards breakfast. Grunden completed her BA in English at California State University, East Bay, and her secondary English teaching credentials at California State University, San Francisco. She lives in Bellingham, Washington, USA.

Charles Hagood, MBA, President and Founder of Healthcare Performance Partners (HPP), has overseen the introduction and implementation of Lean Healthcare systems in numerous healthcare organizations including some of the largest non-profit hospitals, national systems, small critical access hospitals, clinics, and large for-profit systems. HPP is one of the few organizations that have successfully translated Lean manufacturing and the Toyota Production System (TPS) to the healthcare industry. Charles also is a founding Principal of The Access Group, LLC (TAG), which is headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee USA area along with HPP, and has worked with Fortune 100 companies throughout the world (GE, Tyco, Cessna, Nissan and many others) in their Lean transformation and process improvement initiatives. Charles also oversees the application of Lean/TPS methodologies into the planning, design, and construction phases of a wide range of clinical and hospital renovation and construction projects.

Charles speaks throughout the USA and Europe, and most recently China, on the subject of Lean Healthcare and the application of Lean and other process improvement methodologies to healthcare industries. Charles is the founding faculty member of the Lean Healthcare Certificate Program at Belmont University. In 2003, Charles was awarded the State of Tennessee’s top award for his work in Economic Development by the Tennessee Economic Development Council. In 2008 he was recognized as Alumnus of the Year by the Belmont University Massey School of Business. Charles received his MBA degree from Belmont University.