TL;DR: Sending nurses and other hospital staff home early when census dips may reduce short-term labor costs, but it undermines continuous improvement, morale, and patient flow. Lean organizations invest downtime in learning and improvement–because respect for people and better systems drive long-term performance. Since moving into healthcare in 2005, one pattern has consistently stood out: when workload drops, hospitals often respond by “flexing” staff–a polite euphemistic way to say they’re sending nurses and other professionals … Continue reading Why “Flexing” Hospital Staff Is Not Lean — and Hurts Improvement and Performance