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Nonetheless, one can still find on Black’s website today claims he has achieved “truly remarkable results” for his clients — including those in Saskatchewan, where he claims a15,340-hour reduction in staff hours, “avoidance of additional 1,000 new associate hires”, nurses spending 90 per cent of their time on patient care and a “$7.5-million benefit realized from Lean.”

But the man once hired by the University of Saskatchewan and Health Quality Council as research chair in health quality improvement sciences can’t find any evidence to back these claims.

“They are still hiding the big failures in Lean,” said former research chair Thomas Rotter, who has not previously been interviewed on Saskatchewan Lean. “The problem is that we still don’t know if Lean is really working in health care.”

Rotter’s assessments echo the findings of the provincial auditorand is backed by academic papers that peg Lean’s two-year cost between 2012 and 2014 at between $44 million and $49.6 million — half of which went to consultant fees.

Contrary to Black’s claims, Rotter said his surveys show 75 per cent of nurses and 42 per cent of other health professionals said their workload increased somewhat or substantially, while 17 per cent of nurses and 48 per cent of other health professionals said Lean had no impact.

And Rotter’s own 2014 final report on Lean evaluation suggested “most patients could not identify changes in their own care”, with as many seeing negative effects or no change, as saw positive change. “Little has been documented about the failed attempts or barriers to implementation, adoption and sustainability of Lean principles in health care,” Rotter’s final report stated.