Utilizing buffer management to improve performance in a healthcare environment

For over 50 years, the United Kingdom’s National Health Service has aspired to provide universal access to quality health care. However, as evidenced by huge backlogs and lengthy waiting times for many services, the NHS is showing the strain of accommodating rising contemporary expectations within a constrained budget. This paper describes the concept of buffer management, its origins in manufacturing applications, and how it can be applied to generate improvements in health care systems. The successful implementation of buffer management is illustrated with recent applications in the Accident and Emergency departments and the hospital admissions process of three NHS facilities.