Value stream mapping in healthcare – the case of stroke patients treatment at Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology

Purpose:
The purpose of this article is to assess the potential and usefulness of applying value stream mapping (VSM) in the process of treating stroke patients in the Polish healthcare system, using the Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology (IPiN) as an example.

Methods:
The applied VSM method allows for a detailed identification of service delivery points (SDPs), which are the areas of potential organizational and structural changes in the stroke patient treatment process.

Results:
The IPiN VSM of the stroke patients treatment process illustrates the course of the process, taking into consideration all potential opportunities for improvement, as identified during the analytical work. It was determined that improvements require addressing issues, such as excessive patient transport times caused by the distance between the most critical SDPs, i.e., the reception, imaging diagnostics, and the stroke unit and also their location on different floors of the hospital building.

Conclusions:
At this stage, the VSM analysis reveals significant opportunities to improve process efficiency using lean management, without adding extra costs for the hospital. It is important to consider dividing stroke patients into two streams: standard patients (fast track, those without complications) and non-standard patients (slow track, those with complications).