Healthcare Systems in Ireland and Canada have a Lot in Common

Healthcare systems in Ireland and Canada have a lot in common. They both have mainly publicly funded access to healthcare with some private insurance being required for services such as prescription medication. Both countries have issues with long wait times for some elective surgical procedures and for admission to hospital through the emergency department.

There are of course lots of differences in how each country runs their healthcare systems, in particular how their hospital physicians are remunerated. Ireland employs them mainly as salaried employees of the Health Service Executive, while in Canada they are private small business owners who are contracted into hospitals to service patients.

Ireland also has one national governing body in charge of their healthcare system while Canada has different bodies across the provinces and territories responsible for the provision of healthcare

As a Lean practitioner, I have used the same tools and methodologies in both countries to improve core healthcare processes but I have had to adapt to how I approach the work, including aspects of change management and team building, in order to get similar results in both countries.

Managing major Lean improvement projects in two different healthcare systems has proved very insightful and was initially a large learning curve. However, I think each country’s healthcare systems could teach Lean practitioners some valuable lessons and insights that collectively would improve their performance and that of their workplace organisations.

To this end, we have developed an international Accredited Lean Healthcare Black Belt Program that brings together cohorts of healthcare students from both sides of the Atlantic in order to learn about different models for healthcare provision and to enhance the skillsets of the students by exposing them to practitioners from systems outside of their own country. At a Lean Healthcare Black Belt level, the emphasis is on project and change management, building high performing teams and strategic deployment of Lean in order to attain performance excellence and grow in-house capacity.

Please register for our Lean Healthcare Black Belt Program by clicking on the button below. The next virtual Irish/Canadian cohort is beginning on November 1^st 2017. 

Register Today

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