Frederick Southwick, MD What is Value Stream Mapping?
Have you ever felt that your team is working incredibly hard, but the system itself creates delays and frustration? Value stream mapping is a powerful tool for diagnosing this exact problem. It visualizes the entire flow of a process—like a patient’s journey through the emergency department—making the invisible work visible. By creating a shared map, your team can move from guessing about problems to seeing exactly where breakdowns and opportunities for improvement exist.
The map is built using simple components: process boxes show each step, while data boxes capture the time it takes. This allows you to perform the map’s most critical function: distinguishing between value-added time (actions that directly benefit the patient) and non-value-added time (waste). When you add work-in-progress symbols, bottlenecks become immediately obvious. While a value stream map doesn’t provide all the answers, it gives your team a data-driven guide that shows you exactly where to look to make patient care safer and more efficient.
Value stream maps and process maps complement each other. The value stream map is usually a higher-level or more distant view of multiple processes. When the value stream map reveals a bottleneck, process mapping is used to correct the deficient process.
Resources
The resources below provide a practical guide to understanding and applying value stream mapping in a clinical setting.
Creating a Value Stream Map
Watch this video to learn the fundamentals of value stream mapping. It explains how to visualize a clinical process, identify key components like process boxes and data boxes, and distinguish between value-added time and waste to uncover bottlenecks.
Value Stream Mapping Example
This document provides a detailed walkthrough of a value stream map created for an emergency care setting. Use it to understand how a map is constructed and analyzed. It includes:
- A summary of the final performance metrics, including total lead time and the percentage of value-added time.
- A complete value stream map diagram for a patient’s journey through the ED.
- A step-by-step breakdown of the process, including cycle times and identified waste.