Lean for Long-Term Care and Aging Services: A Practical Guide for Driving Improvement, Engagement, and Resident-Centered Service

2nd Edition! There has never been a more exciting-- or perilous-- time for Aging Services. With changing payment models on the horizon, government regulations always in flux, and consumer expectations constantly growing, Aging Services organizations must constantly evolve and improve in order to survive. Lean for Long-Term Care and Aging Services is an invaluable guide for nursing homes, assisted living communities, senior housing, home care, and any other organization focused on providing care and services to older adults or those with disabilities. Lean is based on the popular Toyota Production System, and is quickly becoming the standard methodology for improvement in healthcare. By focusing on customer needs and continuously improving performance while reducing waste, Lean can offer breakthrough results to your organization. As both a primer and workbook, Lean for Long-Term Care and Aging Services offers a hands-on demonstration of Lean philosophy and methodology, along with a variety of ready-to-use tools, guides and assessments to jumpstart your quality improvement program, reduce waste in your organization, and enable you to better serve your residents or clients. Learn how to set your organization apart with innovative management practices and a relentless pursuit of doing good work better. Times are changing quickly. Fee-for-service healthcare will soon be an echo of the past, and organizations will instead be judged on (and reimbursed by) how much value they produce. Quality is becoming a component of the payment model, along with outcomes in skilled nursing care. It will no longer be enough to fill beds-providers will need to demonstrate outstanding quality, high satisfaction, and a relentless approach to increasing value. Under these new conditions, organizations will be unable to cut their way to solutions. Instead, the successful will invest: invest in training, in empowerment, and in continual improvement practices. Lean is a systemic approach to improvement, and focuses on identifying and eliminating waste (of resources, time, effort, and even human potential) through continuous improvement (kaizen) by investing in and empowering everyone in an organization through an engrained philosophy of respect for people. Lean is rooted in the Toyota Production System, and has been successfully deployed in a variety of sectors, including healthcare where efforts have shown significant improvements in quality, safety, efficiency, and employee engagement.