Following the patient throughout each stage of their visit allows you to focus on where there are wasted steps in the process. Just like in an assembly line, the patient proceeds from one point to another until they have completed the visit: check-in, triage, provider encounter, ancillary services, and check-out. Assessing this process and identifying the roadblocks, leads to more efficiency and thus better patient satisfaction and ultimately helps bring more to the bottom line.
As noted in this article, the employee buy-in is necessary to making the lean process effective. Every staff member has the ability to influence each patient’s (or customer’s) experience and bring “value and efficiency to every single patient interaction” which leads to improved patient satisfaction.