At $40 million or so and counting, Saskatchewan’s lean health care initiative has been attracting some media attention as of late.

“Strange” words from a foreign language have made for some amusing tweets and great fodder for Saskatchewan’s official opposition. Throw in the $3,500 per day cost of “Japanese sensei’s” and one can see how the issue has started to grow legs.

With the big price tag in mind – and some other eye catching expenses (eg. flying nearly 900 health executives to Seattle) among the bills – the issue is certainly worth paying attention to…so here are a few thoughts on the matter.

First, I would note the Wall government hasn’t spent millions on some pie-in-the-sky management technique.

Lean management strategies have been around for years and are still taught in management schools. In fact, while recently working on my MBA, one of the required courses I took covered ‘lean’ management, kaizen and many of the other Japanese words currently being chuckled at by some in Sask these days.

In fact, during the course we actually visited a hospital in Winnipeg to learn a bit about their lean implementation strategy and how the process can be useful in the workplace. Further, Manitoba’s NDP government announced a new ‘Lean Council’ in their recent budget to look at how to eliminate waste government-wide. Thus, the Wall government certainly isn’t alone when it comes to using these techniques in the public sector.

The key of course will be for the Wall government to show – quite clearly – they haven’t spent $40 million on a strategy that hasn’t worked. The government claims they’ve already seen enough savings to offset the costs of their consultants. We’re currently in the process of trying to obtain more information from the government on how such savings has been achieved and what considerations went into those calculations. If such calculations don't hold water, then the senseis and Seattle pilgrimages will become icons of a consulting project gone astray and no one will be saying "よくできました" - 'good work.' But until the dust has settled and the final numbers are in, we're going to keep our powder dry.