Visual management system to improve care planning and controlling: the case of intensive care unit
研究了如何在重症监护病房采用视觉管理系统来规划和控制患者护理流程，并通过日常简报和持续改进板提升运营与社会技术绩效。
Health Lean Management (HLM) is usually implemented to enhance the operational performance in health care; nevertheless, scant attention is devoted to visual control and daily accountability processes. This paper aims at investigating how to adopt a visual management system to: plan and control patient journey in health care operations and perform a continuous improvement process. Conducting in-depth interviews and observations, participating in meetings and collecting documentation, the patient journey board and daily briefings of an Intensive Care Unit were studied and improved. In the patient journey board, the Plan, Do and Check phases were reported, distinguishing between actual and planned actions for the patient care. The daily meetings were organised and a continuous improvement board was also developed to solve specific issues (Act phase), by creating ad-hoc teams, involving the staff and reporting transparently on the board. Operational and sociotechnical performance, before and after the adoption of HLM, were assessed demonstrating the effectiveness and efficiency of visual management tools.