Learning About and Identifying Waste in Healthcare - Bonus! Excel File Links to Waste Walk Excel File and Others

Learning About and Identifying Waste in Healthcare provides a practical approach to educate and communicate healthcare staff on the various types of wastes that may exist in their processes as well as provide guidance in

possible ways to eliminate those wastes. Subsequently, individuals and teams can work to eliminate those specific wastes through Kaizen or Rapid Improvement Events. 


The purpose of this book is to provide:


1. A standard communication platform for defining the 12 wastes for an individual as well as a team

2. EXAMPLES of healthcare waste that may “trigger” ideas of wasteful processes in your facility

3. Questions to help DETECT wastes in current processes

4. Suggestions of Lean and Six Sigma methods to ELIMINATE wastes

5. Innovative ways to conduct a Waste Walk

6. An example of a Waste Audit and Waste Walk

7. Space in the book to document current wasteful processes as well as ideas for eliminating those wastes

8. Definitions for the basic Lean and Six Sigma tools

9. A case study on how one facility used the simple concept of waste to engage staff in their Lean journey

10. Dropbox file links to the various Excel Worksheets (i.e., Waste Walk, Waste Audit, etc.)


Any book, white paper, blog, tweet, etc. on Lean, Six Sigma, Lean Sigma, etc. must recognize not only the importance of having staff learn about and identify wastes, as well as the array of Lean Six Sigma tools and concepts to eliminate those wastes, but also recognize the importance of leadership to ensure employees are engaged in an improvement project.


It is with great pleasure to present Learning About and Identifying Waste in Healthcare to all types of healthcare facilities to further provide assistance to not only reduce wastes (and costs), but at the same time improve patient safety, quality of care, and quick access to care. While healthcare is aggressively using a variety of ways to improve the continuum of care, we believe that learning about and identifying wastes in this format will assist this endeavor.