Enhancing chronic care pathways with Health Lean Management: a case study in a Spanish hospital

Purpose: Facing the burden of chronic diseases has become a priority for health-care systems’ economic and social sustainability. To this end, this paper aims to focus on adopting Health Lean Management (HLM), a widely used managerial approach, to improve the performance and quality of care provided in chronic care pathways. HLM addresses not only efficiency and timeliness issues but also care effectiveness and integration. Indeed, the lack of continuity and co-ordination of care constitutes a major challenge for chronic pathways. This research provides an innovative contribution, by extending the implementation of HLM to chronic pathways developed across hospital and territorial care. Indeed, HLM scope typically regards hospital units and departments; hence, analysing the interaction between different levels of care represents a novelty from an academic and practical perspective. Design/methodology/approach: With the aim of understanding how to extend the adoption of HLM towards the t...