About Us - Services

We are led by Karen Walker who originally qualified as a nurse. Karen has over 20 years experience in both public and private healthcare arenas, she has also held senior positions in both medical sales and purchasing & supply chain, and is a fully qualified member of the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply (MCIPS).

Having recently spent 3 years studying and working in US hospitals she is a graduate of IHI (Institute of Healthcare Improvement) Fellowship Development Improvement Advisor Program, and is certified by Michigan University in the Application of Lean Thinking to Healthcare. In 2007 she led the “More Time for Care” project at Bridgeport Hospital, CT which was awarded the Yale Quality Improvement award.

Our associates have a broad spectrum of skills and experience between them which range from training staff in the Airline Industry, teaching MBA programmes, delivering front line healthcare, through to being CEO of a healthcare organisation. We pride ourselves on being able to offer support from both academic and practical perspectives and all associates have track records of delivering results within their chosen fields.

The Business Case for Lean Thinking in Healthcare

We are often asked about the types of benefits that have been realised in delivering our projects. We commonly experience the following

The patient experience:

• The patient journey through the system is more efficient, delays are eliminated, no more lengthy waits for the next step in their care
• Healthcare staff feel less pressurised and have more time to spend in direct contact with patients
• Patients experience processes that have been designed with their safety, and the prevention of error, as focal points and can therefore rely on safer care
• In redesigning patient -centred processes, elements such as dignity and compassion are at the heart of our thinking and as a result patients enjoy more sensitive respectful care and consideration

The healthcare employee experience:

• Front line staff ‘buy in’ more to new processes which they themselves have redesigned. They are often delighted by the fact that their Leadership has placed confidence in them by asking them to use their own knowledge and experience to best design the process/ service in which they are involved and which will best benefit their end user/ client/ patient.
• Some of our projects have been the catalyst for spotlighting an organisations best internal ‘change agents’ to progress their improvement journey.
• Team building. Improved team morale is  experienced and teams have a renewed knowledge and understanding of each others roles in any given process, clarity is provided around each persons responsibilities within a standard work model

General cost and efficiency benefits to the organization in our client base:;

• In eliminating non value added work within organizations, resources are freed up which can be redeployed elsewhere
• One client paid 185 hours of Nursing overtime payments to staff in one ward in the month prior to our Lean project. In the month following completion, no overtime payments were necessary, as work was completed within scheduled shifts.
• 3 crates worth of overstocked inventory was recently removed from one ward alone, in one of our client hospitals. This gave the client an opportunity to redistribute their medical consumables internally and return them to suppliers for refunds
• Our projects, without exception, have all allowed us to highlight further opportunities for improvements in areas such as: delivering enhanced services, increasing activity, reducing on call/ overtime payments, managing stock levels, improving customer services/ communications etc