All posts from Mark Graban’s LeanBlog.org, including podcasts, announcements, articles, and more.
We had an amazing first day at the Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit here in Orlando. We have 260 Lean healthcare leaders, including about 30 physicians, from 7 countries represented and there’s a lot of sharing, learning, and inspiration occurring.…
ThedaCare, the health system in Wisconsin, often gets a lot of attention for the Lean improvements in their four hospitals, but they are also doing some excellent work in redesigning primary and specialty care, as well (as highlighted in this…
This linked article (“Lean cuts Healthcare Costs at Virginia Mason Hospital in Seattle“) summarizes improvements and Lean methods at Seattle’s Virginia Mason Medical Center and at the UK NHS Royal Bolton Trust hospital. Much of the VMMC story has been…
If you’ve been anywhere near a TV lately, you’ve probably heard and seen this hypnotizing “What is iPad?” commercial (YouTube link). The announcer breathlessly and shamelessly tells you how “beautiful” and “magical” the iPad is… “it’s crazy powerful,” he says,…
About a week ago, I was flying, and the passenger beside me knocked his water over right into my lap. Argh! I sent a Tweet posing a “contest with no prize” (as I didn’t want to stifle creativity with an…
A common theme I’ve written about from the start of my blogging days is the Lean/Toyota notion that price is dictated by the market (the customers) — price is NOT something you can set in isolation based on your costs.…
Episode #92 brings a returning guest, the always entertaining and thought-provoking Mike Micklewright. He is the author of a batch of two new books: Out of Another @#&*% Crisis! Motivation through Humiliation and Lean ISO 9001: Adding Spark to your…
I’ve been really intrigued recently by the innovations in the “Lean Startup” movement. I’ve been reading Steve Blank’s book The Four Steps to the Epiphany about his “Customer Development” model (a process to parallel the traditional product development model). I’ll…
Last week, I published Part 1 of my notes about a breakfast talk by Dr. Brent James at the Shingo Prize Conference. One of the more interesting things that Dr. James said was something he prefaced as saying it would…
A few weeks back, I was given the chance to preview a Lean Healthcare intro video from a Wisconsin firm called Optima. The video is part of their Lean Healthcare Video Series, called Lean: A Prescription for Healthcare. The video…
At last week’s Shingo Prize conference, I was very excited to meet Dr. Stephen Covey (my podcast is here), but I was just as excited, if not more so, to meet Dr. Brent James, the noted healthcare quality expert from…
I recently heard this on a cable news channel that was blaring in the airport: “The current passport processing time is 3 to 6 weeks”. Well, that’s not right from a Lean perspective. In this post, I’ll talk about breaking…
