Adapting Lean for process redesign in senior day care services

Abstract

The developed world’s population is aging, due to trends of increased life expectancies and decreased fertility rates. Like many Asian countries, Singapore is facing a key demographic challenge with its rapidly aging society, driven by rising life expectancies and declining fertility rates. Lower fertility rates and increased longevity mean that the number of seniors is expected to double to over 900,000, or 1 in 4 Singaporeans by the year 2030 (1). One of the nation’s solutions to this social problem is the long-term care support scheme for older persons, including housework and physical activity support community care centre facilities such as the senior day care centres helps community-dwelling elderly to manage disability, frailty, and multi-morbidity (2). We ground this paper in senior day care centres, where community-based facilities provide case management and a variety of day care activities to cater for a range of elders with differing levels of needs. In contrast to primary care hospital settings, which are mostly focused on acute and short term treatments, the primary objectives of senior day care centres are to improve the quality of life of seniors and delay institutionalization (3,4). There are, therefore, important contextual distinctions that can have implications on how Lean should be adapted to aid in the Original Article