A hospital explored opportunities to reduce waste. First they eliminated overuse of technologies like magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or ultrasound by making them outside the normal treatment process. Then they eliminated automatic daily lab tests for patients in the hospital and multiple tests that add no new information. They were able to reduce blood assays required for a particular situation from 23 to 5. The principle they began to focus on was to reduce the sampling and testing frequency for any process that is working as it is supposed to.

Many standard practices in hospitals are not necessary.  For example, nurses insist on giving baths three times a week at home. A review of all standard practices using the question, "Why do we need to do this?" will identify overkill situations. For example, after review of their practices, one hospital began treating the physicians' standing orders as the normal procedure and made it an exception to do anything additional.