I was asked today to define what an Improvement Sponsor was and what role they played. Of course, my first reference was to our standard guide to the essential roles you need to have to make your Lean Healthcare Programme successful, with the starter text for an Improvement Sponsor shown below:

We are running a series of Open Workshops designed to help you get the most out of your improvement programme and to help you identify the barriers that are stopping you from engaging your staff, achieving the best results possible and sustaining the changes.

Details can be found by following the link to Events on Our Website.

I promised to update the blog after we had undertaken the experimental exercise to apply Lean Healthcare to a reduction in Medication Risk as opposed to simply Service Redesign and although it was a fraught and stressful journey, with the support of the nursing and medical staff as well as the National Patient Safety Agency we have managed to apply Lean Healthcare (and particularly VSAs) to the reduction in Risk.

Why is it that some organisations take leaps and bounds forward and others get stuck in a rut making only small gains (or none at all)?

Is it because of the structure of their improvement activities and the way that they recognise the success of individuals? Well, the quite simple answer is 'yes'.

In terms of structuring improvements, why not see how many of the ten points below you have for your improvement programme:

Our new eBook is available from today (10th December) until the 24th December to download.

To receive your copy you need to visit our main website (www.amnis-uk.com) and sign up to our newsletter network. You will immediately receive notification of how you can download our first eBook 'Lean for Practitioners' and you will shortly receive notification of how to download our new eBook 'Sustaining Lean Healthcare Programmes'.

As with my post of yesterday, I was chatting today with a friend who is leading an Acute Trust's drive to achieve Foundation Status and she made a statement which I thought would make an interesting post about Lean Healthcare.

Next week is another interesting week in the world of Lean Healthcare. Mental Health Trusts have started to realise that Lean also has applications in their arena and we are meeting with a further two trusts during the week (although I personally won't be going as I am working for most of the week in an Acute Trust).

Rather than provide some new insight, I thought I would summarise my plans for next week:

Monday: A Scoping Session for a Lean Healthcare Programme in the Acute Sector (focused on Outpatients) and this will be followed by a meeting with the CEO (the Scoping Session is part of a major programme of activity we are undertaking).

Service improvement teams are an absolute and essential asset to any Healthcare organisations. With so many organisations looking for excellent people who have the right skills, the right attitude and the right approach it is not surprising that quite a few are struggling to recruit the few people who completely fit the bill.