Contributions of electronic and traditional kanban to hospital bed management

Abstract

The lack of beds results in waiting lines and patients in corridors waiting on stretchers waiting for beds. These challenges generate dissatisfaction in patients and health professionals and may cause an increase in the organization's expenses, due to the long stay in hospital and poor management of resources. The use of bed management and concepts and tools of the Lean Healthcare philosophy, such as Kanban, which allows better control of demands and helps to increase the occupancy rate of institutions, greater use of available capacity, having a direct effect on increasing the satisfaction of patients. This article aims to present the different characteristics of traditional and electronic Kanban for bed management. The methodology used was exploratory and bibliographic research. Search engines such as Google Scholar, Web of Science and Scopus were used, according to the keywords: lean healthcare, kanban, electronic kanban, bed management, among other related terms for a broad search on the content. With the analysis performed, the results found were the contributions generated from the use of the electronic Kanban tool, which provides an optimization in the management of beds through efficiency in accessing and updating data, increasing the autonomy of health agents and offering quality care to patients patients. The study contributes to the academic society by providing an overview of the use of the Kanban tool in hospital units for bed management.