How does lean work in emergency care? A case study of a lean-inspired intervention at the Astrid Lindgren Children's hospital, Stockholm, Sweden.

Background: There is growing interest in applying lean thinking in healthcare, yet, there is still limited knowledge of how and why lean interventions succeed (or fail). To address this gap, this in-depth case study examines a lean-inspired intervention in a Swedish pediatric Accident and Emergency department.

Methods: We used a mixed methods explanatory single case study design.

Managing health care decisions and improvement through simulation modeling.

Simulation modeling is a way to test changes in a computerized environment to give ideas for improvements before implementation. This article reviews research literature on simulation modeling as support for health care decision making. The aim is to investigate the experience and potential value of such decision support and quality of articles retrieved.

Lean thinking in healthcare: a realist review of the literature.

Objective: To understand how lean thinking has been put into practice in healthcare and how it has worked.

Design: A realist literature review. Data sources The authors systematically searched for articles in PubMed, Web of Science and Business Source Premier (January 1998 to February 2008) and then added articles through a snowball approach.