Jenei István

István Jenei: Lean transformation of hospital processes – Structuring foreign and Hungarian experiences,
PhD Dissertation, Corvinus University of Budapest, Doctoral School in Business Administration
2. The health care context
The chapter presents the crucial environmental factors, i.e. the ones that exert the
biggest influence on the lean transformation of hospital processes. The first section lists
the arguments which urge the transformation of health care in general, and hence give a
significant impetus to Lean. Then it quotes some works which call the attention to errors
and wastes in hospital care. The rest of the chapter is devoted to the characteristics of
health care services, different in many respects from those of production, and of
relevance for the interpretation of the results.
2.1. Actuality of the transformation of health care:
macro-level challenges
In recent years, the performance and expenditures of health care systems have
moved to the focus of social and political attention in the advanced countries. In the
globalising world, ever fewer of these economies can afford to finance the operation of
their welfare systems in the same way as before (de Koning et al., 2006; Békesi, 2006).
The health care systems, in particular, warrant special attention due to their significant
and growing share in public expenditures (Figure 5), and their consequent major effect
on such macro-economic indicators as the development of the general government
deficit, for example. The growth of health care expenditures is the result of such trends,
typical in the advanced economies, as the aging of society, conducive to the widening of
the circle of beneficiaries as a matter of course, or the application of the results of
scientific development, which implies the use of more and more expensive procedures,
instruments and medicines. However, several countries, struggling in the grip of
globalisation, can simply not bear a further growth of expenditures.
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