The present study evaluates how five sectors of two Brazilian hospitals have implemented lean healthcare concepts in their operations. The main characteristics of the implementation process are analyzed in the present study: the motivational factor for implementation, implementation time, form (consultancy or internal), team (hospital and consultants), lean implementation continuity/sustainability, lean healthcare tools and methods implemented, problems/improvement opportunities, lean healthcare barriers faced during the implementation process, and critical factors that affected the implementation and the results obtained in each case. The case studies indicate that reducing patient lead times and costs and making financial improvements were the primary factors that motivated lean healthcare implementation in the hospitals studied. Several tools and methods were used in the cases studied, especially value stream mapping and DMAIC. The barriers found in both hospitals are primarily associated with the human factor. Additionally, the results obtained after implementation were analyzed and improvements in financial aspects, productivity and capacity, and lead time reduction of the analyzed sectors were observed. Further, this study also exhibited four propositions elaborated from the results obtained from the cases that highlighted barriers and challenges to lean healthcare implementation in developing countries. Two of these barriers are hospital organizational structure (and, consequently, how the senior management works with medical staff), and outsourcing hospital activities. This study also concluded that the initialization and maintenance of lean healthcare implementation rely heavily on external support because lean healthcare subject knowledge is not yet available in the healthcare organization, which represents a challenge. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

O sistema de produção que foca na geração de valor para o cliente e na eliminação de desperdícios já demonstrou seu poder no setor manufatureiro e agora começa a chamar a atenção do setor de bens e serviços. Um enfoque crescente, em particular, está sendo dado à aplicação dos conceitos lean no setor de saúde, sendo comumente denominado lean healthcare. A literatura apresenta diversos casos de hospitais que iniciaram sua jornada lean e já colhem seus resultados. Este trabalho visa analisar alguns desses casos, acompanhar e relatar uma aplicação prática conduzida pelo autor e, como resultado, contribuir com recomendações para condução de futuras implantações de conceitos lean em hospitais.

This article presents the implementation of Lean health care techniques in a surgery department of a Brazilian hospital. The proposed Lean methodology is based on a set of nested improvement cycles that are used to continuously improve the value chain. The results of the implementation showed improvement in cycle time, capacity, and savings in costs. Another important improvement was a significant reduction of 94 percent in the index of delayed surgery due to the lack of materials and a reduction in postsurgery infection.