Making cars and making health care: a critical review

View/ Open
Author(s)
Winch, Sarah
Henderson, Amanda J
Year published
2009
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
The uncritical adoption of production-line manufacturing practices (such as "lean thinking") into work design processes in hospitals creates a fundamental tension between the production of health care and protection of the patient. There is scant evidence that re-engineering health care services in line with industrial models increases their efficiency. Indeed, reducing the richness of health care practice to impoverished snippets of work may add to the problems of hospital misadventure and inefficiency rather than solve them.The uncritical adoption of production-line manufacturing practices (such as "lean thinking") into work design processes in hospitals creates a fundamental tension between the production of health care and protection of the patient. There is scant evidence that re-engineering health care services in line with industrial models increases their efficiency. Indeed, reducing the richness of health care practice to impoverished snippets of work may add to the problems of hospital misadventure and inefficiency rather than solve them.
View less >
View less >
Journal Title
Medical Journal of Australia
Volume
191
Issue
1
Copyright Statement
© 2009 Australasian Medical Publishing Company. This is the author-manuscript version of this paper. Reproduced in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher. Please refer to the journal's website for access to the definitive, published version.
Subject
Biomedical and clinical sciences
Nursing not elsewhere classified
Psychology