The experience of tertiary care public hospital in Oman: Lean performance improvement to enhance universal health coverage

Abstract

Healthcare systems at an organizational level need to equip its people with tools that ensure continuous performance improvement to help sustain Universal Health Coverage (UHC). A large tertiary care public hospital in Oman (Royal Hospital [RH]), is sharing its experience in performance improvement using lean methodology. The RH introduced lean performance improvement to improve the efficiency of its administrative and clinical processes. This remarkable change was a cultural shift as it empowered clinical and non-clinical teams to improve the performance of the hospital operations continuously. Hospital leaders need to create opportunities for sustainable UHC at an organizational level. Introducing lean improvement methods at the hospital level leads to better problem definition and resolution. The people who do the work, need to improve the work, and eliminate waste in the processes as a day to day work style.