Back in 2009, I pointed an early iPhone at my TV and recorded a Fox News segment about ThedaCare’s collaborative care model. The footage is grainy. You can see the glare on the screen and hear the room around me.…
I’ve heard a lot of rumblings recently about what might be happening at ThedaCare, a health system in Wisconsin that’s been considered one of the best examples of "Lean healthcare" anywhere in the world for more than a decade. It seems that there is an evolution occurring in their approach to Lean.
I’ve received a formal statement from ThedaCare public relations, which you can find in this post, so I will stick to the facts that they have given me and other information that's publicly available online.
My guest for Episode #286 is Dean Gruner, MD, the recently retired CEO of ThedaCare, a health system in Wisconsin that has long been considered a worldwide leader in the practice of Lean in healthcare. See this article about his retirement, where he says "I've gotten more than I've given."
Dean was previously my guest in Episodes 119 and 144 and I'm thrilled that he took time out of his retirement to talk with me about his lessons learned as he looks back on how ThedaCare's Lean journey has evolved, including some things he would consider to be missteps and challenges that they used as a springboard to get even better.
I will also be releasing a separate episode where Dean talks about their experiences with Accountable Care Organizations (our topic from #144) and other "big picture" healthcare issues of the day.
I'm including a full transcript along with a three-page PDF summary, as I've been doing recently.
While I'm writing here about Northwestern men's basketball learning from Duke (without copying everything), the same ideas apply if you're Ford learning from Toyota or a hospital learning from ThedaCare.
A few weeks ago, I saw this announcement about Dean Gruner, MD, the second CEO to lead ThedaCare during their Lean journey: Dr. Dean Gruner, ThedaCare President and CEO, Announces Retirement “Dean Gruner, MD, president and CEO of ThedaCare since…
For today’s “Throwback Thursday,” I recently re-watched parts of a DVD I helped produce a few years back for the ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value — Thinking Lean at ThedaCare DVD: Strategy Deployment, Alignment & Leadership. In the video, ThedaCare’s CEO, Dr.…
I was thankful to find this CBC Radio news story / podcast from the program “White Coat Black Art,” hosted by Dr. Brian Goldman: The Toyota Way for Healthcare It’s just under 30 minutes long and I think it’s a…
I am an unabashed fan of the ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value, as you’re probably aware. For full disclosure, I was previously an employee of the Lean Enterprise Institute, a key partner of the Center. They have a lot of…
It was great to see this TIME story (which I think is only available online), by Rick Wartzman of the Drucker Institute: “The Real Face of Healthcare Reform.” Wartzman cites ThedaCare as an organization that is successfully reforming itself AND…
I had a chance again today to attend ThedaCare’s weekly “report out,” where a few hundred people gather in an auditorium to review and celebrate their “rapid improvement events” from the past week. I think everybody should make the trip…
ThedaCare, a health system in Wisconsin, is well known for their Lean improvement system and Lean management system (“business performance system“) in their hospitals, including their innovative “collaborative care” model. Amednews.com recently wrote about ThedaCare’s innovations in primary care delivery…
Joining me for Episode #169 is Leonard L. Berry, PhD, Distinguished Professor of Marketing in the Mays Business School at Texas A&M University. We are talking about his article that he co-authored with John Toussaint, MD Mayo Clinic Proceedings: “The…
