Systemic service value stream mapping. Application to a healthcare case

Abstract

The  application  of  value  stream  mapping  (VSM)  for  performance improvement  in  service  companies  including  healthcare  service systems is still in development in Latin America. When this Lean tool is applied with a systemic approach for mapping these value streams, the application should represent customer actions and interactions within the complete service system and the internal interactions between contact employees (front office) and back office employees, as well as identify the segments of the value stream as loops, defining these loops as partial units of  improvement. A value stream in a clinical laboratory in Colombia was selected as the application case. Three loops were identified  in this value stream: blood sample collection loop,  sample processing  loop  (chemical  analyses  and  tests) and results delivery  loop (report of findings).  This research only focuses on improving the sample collection loop. Lean Thinking principles and tools are applied in order to improve value flow to customers and key operative performance indicators of the system.  Some of those key operational performance indicators were improved above 20%.