Uncovering Inefficiencies in the Workers’ Compensation Industry Using Lean Methodology
Open AccessA workers’ compensation health-care delivery system includes patterns of repetitive nonvalue-added transactional activities for physical-therapy patients and health care providers. These patterns include inefficiencies in the information flow between insurance companies, the referring care providers, and treatment care providers, thus negatively impacting the delivery of care for injured workers.Lean is an established continuous improvement methodology for identifying, quantifying, and removing waste in business processes. It has been successfully applied in both manufacturing and service sectors and has been suggested for use in the field of worker compensation. In this research, we applied Lean principles to better understand the journey of an injured worker within the worker compensation system. The results showed that Lean could play a critical role in identifying and quantifying continuous improvement opportunities that could accelerate patient’s treatment, reduce administrative burden on health-care providers, and improve the overall claim cost of insurance companies. Thus, the application of Lean has the potential to transform workers’ compensation in the industry.
- All rights reserved
Notice to Authors
If you are the author of this work and you have any questions about the information on this page, please use the Contact form to get in touch with us.