Lean management for improving hospital waiting times-Case study of a Vietnamese public/general hospital emergency department.

Introduction: Emergency departments (EDs) at public hospitals in Vietnam typically face problems with overcrowding, as well as being populated by a wide variety of illnesses, resulting in increasing dissatisfaction from patients. To alleviate these problems, we used the increasingly popular value-stream mapping (VSM) and lean strategy approaches to (1) evaluate the current patient flow in EDs; (2) identify and eliminate the non-valued-added components; and (3) modify the existing process in order to improve waiting times.

Methods: Data from a total of 742 patients who presented at the ED of 108 Military Central Hospital in Hanoi, Vietnam, were collected.