Hi, I'm back from a whirlwind week-long trip to China, where I taught classes on Lean healthcare in Beijing, Shanghai, and Chongqing. I had the chance to visit two very modern hospitals and I really appreciate the interest in healthcare improvement. I'll be blogging more about this next week and beyond.
While I was away, KaiNexus, a technology company I've worked with over the past five years, was featured in this Modern Healthcare article:
Innovations: Software KaiNexus offers Lean an assist
Our founder, Dr. Greg Jacobson, and I are quoted in the article and the work of one of our customers, Mary Greeley Medical Center, is featured.
In part:
“A modern, continuous improvement system is different from a suggestion box,” said Mark Graban, author of Lean Hospitals: Improving Quality, Patient Safety, and Employee Engagement and a consultant to KaiNexus. “In a suggestion box model, basically everything bubbles up to a committee. The kaizen model (the Lean philosophy) is based on local teams managing local decisions.”
In addition to the transparency the software provides, it's also designed to be a collaborative rather than a passive tool. Managers have a certain amount of time to respond to an idea and will receive alerts when they haven't done so.
“The speed in which you answer a new idea really matters,” Jacobson said. Otherwise, employees “get disenfranchised and feel like management isn't listening to them.”
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Mark's new book is The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation.
He is also the author of Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More, the Shingo Award-winning books Lean Hospitals and Healthcare Kaizen, and the anthology Practicing Lean.
Mark is also a Senior Advisor to the technology company KaiNexus.
Well, glad to see you’re back..
Hope you had a great time Mark.
Thanks. It was a fascinating trip. I’d call it a great time. Zero tourism time, unless some leisurely meals count (but many meals on a plane or train or on the run). I’ll be blogging more about the trip, starting tomorrow.