Why am I doing this?

After my engineering studies, I was a production and project manager in the automotive industry, with no clear purpose in life. Until I became a father…

I have three great sons, but yes … with such wild brats you sometimes visit a hospital. Like that time when my middle son had broken his leg between the spokes of my bicycle. Upon arrival at the emergency room, with my son in excruciating pain, I was amazed at the lack of clarity. Where were we supposed to go? How long would it take? It gave me a headache and stomach ache, and I wasn’t even the patient.

“Surely we can do better than that, when caring for people,” I thought.

Since then, I have focused on helping healthcare providers improve their work, leadership and organization for their patients, because I have seen and experienced on several occasions, how frustrating working in healthcare can be.

Virtually nowhere people work harder. You’re drowning in rules, but have to stay sharp, because if you’re not paying attention things can go very wrong. An improbable amount of your time is sucked up by all those everyday problems, when all you want is to take good care of your patients.

Therefore, I became the first, fully dedicated Dutch “Lean Thinker” in healthcare.

I now have 30 years of experience with leadership and process improvement in the workplace, including 20 years in healthcare. I have helped hundreds of physicians, nursing team leaders and managers make patient care safer, better and more efficient.

I share my long-standing experience with as many people as possible, through my books, inspiration sessions and 1:1 mentoring.

What my clients are saying:

“We chose Arnout because of his deep-seated drive to improve healthcare. He taught us to be self-reliant problem solvers. How? By asking many questions (why, why, why, why, …) and constantly challenging us. One of the many results has been a 40% increase in productivity. We now help many more, more complex patients, without employing additional staff, while employee satisfaction rose from sub par to a 7+.”

– Thed Naber, Director of Operations, Institute for Radiotherapy

“Within a few months, we reduced the number of medication errors from 9 to 1 per quarter, whereas no one in our organization had succeeded in doing so in the previous 10 years. We also saved 3 hours per month on corrections and checks.”

– Danielle Driessen, Nursing Team Leader, Institute for the Intellectually disabled

“Our doctors see twice as many children, nurses do more interesting work and parents have a fixed point of contact”

– Staff Physician Quality and Innovation, Public health organization