Critical Factors of Lean Healthcare: an Overview

Efficiency is a main goal in healthcare because it has an impact on safety, quality and waste reduction. To increase efficiency, hospitals and laboratories around the world have implemented Lean Healthcare (LH) in their processes. Reports of case studies, critical factors and benefits have been increased in literature. However, the recent scientific literature review addressing the evolution of LH, the status of critical factors and its impact on healthcare is scarce. Therefore, this paper is intended to provide insights of the LH phenomenon and its evolution in recent years by: (1) examining critical success factors of LH and (2) outlining LH benefit patterns. A total of 218 papers were included in a review of the literature following an adaptation of PRISMA methodology from 2002 to 2016. Ten critical success factors (CSFs) of LH implementation were identified and described.