Our collaborative eBook project, Practicing Lean, has raised over $1000 so far for the Louise H. Batz Patient Safety Foundation. The book is now available as a paperback book through Amazon, in addition to the Kindle Store and LeanPub.com. Please check it out!
I saw this article a few days ago in one of the larger healthcare industry trade publications: How One Woman Saved IU Health $54 Million The headline is misleading, as addressed in the opening sentence / sub-headline of the story (via HealthLeaders): “With a little help from about 10,000 of her friends and colleagues, the head
I had a chance to visit one of their community hospitals, Hillcrest Hospital, as well as the main campus. It was a very stimulating visit and it was great to see the progress they were making in building a “culture of improvement.”
I really enjoyed spending the last two days at Mary Greeley Medical Center in Ames, Iowa the last two days. On Tuesday, there was event planned by MGMC and the Iowa Lean Consortium based on the “Kaizen Live!” site visits that…
It’s one thing to hear Lean professionals or specialists talking about the power of this methodology to improve healthcare. To me, it’s not just theory, it’s something I’ve seen in practice. Sure, there are many engineers and former business people working in…
Yesterday was an exciting day for me, professionally and personally, as I received my first copies of the 3rd edition of my book Lean Hospitals (I’ll stop blogging about the book so much, I promise). This is the fifth time I’ve had…
This episode is sponsored by StoreSMART. My guest for episode #252 is Jordan Peck, a Senior Director in the Center for Performance Improvement at MaineHealth and Maine Medical Center. Jordan and I first met when he was a graduate student…
Our friends at Gemba Academy produce some really nice online Lean education materials. It’s a subscription service, but you can see some free videos on YouTube. As part of their “Gemba Live” series, host Ron Pereira visited Franciscan St. Francis Health…
Recent lessons from NICU innovation, primary care access, fan safety in baseball, and ongoing VA wait-time gaming This post is a collection of recent updates and follow-ups to topics I’ve written about before–spanning healthcare improvement, patient access, safety in sports,…
Lean leadership isn’t just about asking people how to fix problems–it’s about asking them what problems matter most. When leaders shift from telling to asking, they unlock intrinsic motivation, deeper engagement, and more sustainable improvement. This lesson came through clearly…
TL;DR: Franciscan Health built a lasting culture of continuous improvement by patiently practicing Kaizen every day–not as a program, but as a way of thinking. Over time, consistent leadership behaviors, frontline engagement, and psychological safety led to more than 27,000…
This week, Joe Swartz (pictured at left) and I are running a “Kaizen Live” workshop at his main hospital, Franciscan St. Francis Health. Today and tomorrow, we’re running a 1.5-day workshop where attendees will get to visit departments and hear…
