Doctors Remove Healthy Kidney from Cancer Patient
If you're new to the idea of “lean healthcare” and the drastic need for improvement, read this article. Most likely, you're reading this as a non medical professional. But think about the obvious error proofing methods and simple things that could be put in place to prevent these errors. It's simply inexcusable that errors like these occur, they are most certainly preventable. As lean professionals, we should be knocking down the doors offering to help.
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Mark Graban is an internationally-recognized consultant, author, and professional speaker who has worked in healthcare, manufacturing, and startups. His latest book is Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More. He is author of the Shingo Award-winning books Lean Hospitals and Healthcare Kaizen, as well as The Executive Guide to Healthcare Kaizen. He also published the anthology Practicing Lean that benefits the Louise H. Batz Patient Safety Foundation, where Mark is a board member. Mark is also a Senior Advisor to the technology company KaiNexus.
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Devastating examples of just how seriously in need of error proofing the healthcare industry is. Mistakes like this are just inexcusable.
I think it’s important to remember that most of the mistakes are due to the system, not due to bad doctors. Sure, some medical mistakes are due to gross negligence, but the fact that so many problems like this occurs reflects the idea that the problems are systemic. I heard someone say the goal of medical error proofing is to “help prevent good doctors from making bad mistakes.”
Anyway, my goal is not to beat up on doctors, unless they have no interest in helping error proof the system.