Denver Health is Colorado's primary “safety net” institution, providing billions of care for the uninsured. Twenty-five percent of all Denver residents, or approximately 150,000 individuals, receive their healthcare at Denver Health. Denver Health is a comprehensive, integrated organization with multiple components. Denver Health is one of the earlier pioneers in applying Lean in healthcare. Since 2005, it has conducted over 225 Lean Rapid Improvement Events, with teams organized to identify and remove waste. These Rapid Improvement Teams have been improving patient care processes in areas such as Perioperative Services, Out Patient Clinics, In-patient Hospital Flow, Ob/Gyn and Patient Access. Denver Health provides intensive Lean training for its clinical and nonclinical leadership positions. These Denver Health Black Belts utilize Lean to conduct daily Kaizens for addressing waste and improving processes. This two-pronged approach for deploying Lean has netted a cumulative $38 million in new cost savings and new revenue. Learn about Denver Health’s Lean journey. Hear about case studies and lessons learned, and the results that were achieved and verified. Learn about the structure Denver Health developed to deploy Lean in a complex healthcare organization.

Saving money, saving jobs, saving lives.