
274 Leveraging Lean in Ancillary Hospital Services
The goals with Lean can be grouped into different phases or levels for pharmacy:
1. The rst level is to improve the existing processes within the pharmacy.
2. The second level to look at how the pharmacy interacts with the rest of the hospital system.
The key with pharmacy implementations is to start with the VSM and then step back and see the big
picture. Look at the overall system and determine which systems need to be improved?
FIRST LEVEL
The rst level involves improving processes within the pharmacy (Figure 11.2). This includes
order processing, picking, inventorying, IV processing, etc. ...