Skip to main content

The Children’s Mercy Lean System

icon indicating you can send an email upon click Email
icon indicating you can send an email upon click Email

The Children’s Mercy Lean System is our proven method for continuous improvement. Our Lean system is comprised of three major elements:

  • Lean mindset
  • Leadership and management systems
  • Improvement techniques

Our system brings consistency and predictability to our work, ensuring we’re patient-centered with every action, every day.

Our approach

 

The word "Leadership" is surrounded by the following words, making a continuous circle with arrows: Innovate, Deploy Strategy, Practice Daily Management, Provide Care/Do Our Daily Work, Improve Performance, Spread Best Practices.

With a systematic approach to solving problems and managing our daily work, we’re developing the following across our organization:

  • Problem solvers
  • Streamlined processes
  • Agility
  • Innovation
  • Waste and cost reduction
  • Satisfaction improvement for our patients, families and caregivers

Through servant leadership (leaders supporting the front-line caregivers) and a rigorous daily management system, we’re continuously working to improve care and add value to the patients and families we serve.

Lean tours


The Children's Mercy Performance Improvement team regularly provide tours and education sessions at Children's Mercy Adele Hall Campus to share our Lean methodology, best practices and lessons learned along our continuous improvement journey. Sharing our Lean management system serves to not only help other organizations improve their quality and performance, but it also helps strengthen our own, as we learn through teaching and coaching others.

Examples of what you'll experience during a tour:

Readiness huddle board with the following columns: Quality & Safety, People, Stewardship, Delivery, Patient & Family Experience.
Visual management to systemically surface, solve and escalate problems at the front line (clinical and non-clinical).
STP board with different slips of paper with problems to solve.
Methods for developing an organization of problem solvers to see waste, problem solve and contribute to continuous improvement.
Six Children's Mercy providers gathered around a table looking at a paper as part of a Rapid Performance Review.
Rapid performance improvement workshops for improving processes.
Example of a standard work document.
Standard work documents for sustaining improvement gains.
Three Children's Mercy providers looking at computers and smiling.
Gemba walks for observing where the work is happening, with the people doing the work.
Example of process mapping.
Process mapping for improving flow and relentlessly eliminate waste.
Sign that reads "Children's Mercy Adele Hall Campus"

Come visit us

If your team or organization is looking to learn more about Lean continuous improvement we can help. Based on your learning objectives and where you are in your Lean journey, we can build a tour agenda to fit your needs. Organizations across many industries are able to learn from how we implement the elements of a Lean daily management system. There is a fee associated with these visits, which helps defray costs for team members’ time, resources and facilities.

About Us Menu
Children's Mercy
About Children’s Mercy: A nonprofit children’s hospital serving kids and families
The Children’s Mercy Lean System