Accreditation and Lean

It's true that accreditation of a healthcare organization does NOT necessary mean that such organization provide high quality and safety to its patients. There are many differences between compliance and improvement, in terms of goals, motives, scope, targets,and impact on the staff and culture. As a matter of fact, depending on the way compliance is marketed and implemented within an organization, it can be hinder the efforts for continuous improvement.
In this part of the world, compliance is usually mistaken for quality management, and the focus of many organization is just to implement the standards and pass the surveys, that's it. This is evident by the increasing number of healthcare organizations receiving international accreditation compared to the low level of care and safety provided. Sad but true!

Joint Commission International (JCI) , a group which follows the US-based-The Join Commission-had added a new standard for hospitals in 2014 which asks quality professionals to analyze the impact of improvements prioritized by the leadership on efficiency and therefore cost. I remember that a Lean project was the first thing that jumps to my mind when trying to comply to such standard.

It's really interesting to see accreditation bodies starting to look at efficient use of resources in healthcare, and the efforts made to improve that. This could be driven by the long standing and continuous rise in healthcare cost and expenditure not only in US but worldwide, to the point that it has become an international standard. I believe the success of lean healthcare organizations in US and other countries, and the fact that you can provide safe and high quality care while lowering cost through reduction of waste is a reality today proven by facts and figures. Advanced healthcare systems have realized today that a sustainable safe and quality care can't be accomplished without proper and efficient use of resources, with people as the main one.

Is it possible that accreditation bodies will demand healthcare organizations to adopt Lean in the near future ?