LEAN Training, Knowledge Transfer & Expert Coaching – LEAN intervention to improve service delivery

South Africa’s healthcare system (access and quality thereof) has been steadily improving since 1994; However; a lot remains to be done to address problems that plague most of the public healthcare facilities; the most apparent being long waiting times largely emanating from incoherent processes and ineffective utilisation of available resources. This is further exacerbated by the increased demand brought on by the quadruple burden of disease (poverty related illness, chronic diseases of lifestyle, injuries, and HIV/AIDS); under-resourced Public Health facilities; as well as a Demand–supply mismatch.

As a consequence, Healthcare Facility staff work long hours and staff morale is low. Valuable productive personnel hours are lost as patients wait in long queues, while some patients’ conditions continue to deteriorate before being attended to. This negatively impacts the South African economy, as a substantial amount of the workforce relies on the public healthcare system.

It is against this background that Ekurhuleni Municipality partnered with SES to improve on service delivery through a Lean intervention at the District, Sub district and Facility Level with a view to primarily reduce patient waiting times; and gradually systematically addressing other operational issues.

The Lean intervention will consist of the following:

• Introductory Training for EMM Health Management Team
• Facility Based Training for the Ideal Clinics, Social Development & Environmental Health teams
• Mentorship/Coaching Support
• A detailed toolkit for programme continuation and roll-out to other facilities