TL;DR: Cherry-picked metrics can make performance look better without actually improving it. Process Behavior Charts help leaders distinguish real improvement from noise, stop overreacting, and focus on improving the system instead of explaining fluctuations. One of the phrases and concepts…
In this post, I share some thoughts and build upon one of the presentations at last week's Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit, where, Tim Pehrson, a regional CEO for Intermountain Healthcare, talked about how they piloted a continuous improvement process in one region... and how they're now spreading it throughout the system. This leads to confusion, in online discussion, about terms like projects, suggestions, ideas, and such...
I received another reader question (submit yours here) and it’s about statistics, “daily Lean management,” and visualizing performance data. Hey Mark: I like your posts about control charts and data. Our health system is rolling out a “Daily Lean Management” system…
In this post, I look at the impact (or lack thereof) of targets, rankings, and incentives, when it comes to safe driving or PCI (angioplasty) procedures in a hospital cath lab. Are we improving? How do we know? How do we improve?
Can leaders get some improvement just by asking for it? Does improvement stall out if we don't have a method for doing so? What can "process behavior" charts show us in our work today?
Here is an article that I wrote and published on LinkedIn on Tuesday on the topic of managing metrics in a better, less wasteful, less frustrating, and more productive manner.
Patients waiting too long for the E.D. is a problem around the world. Many U.S. hospitals put up billboards that claim to shed light on how long you'll have to wait. But are the signs and numbers more confusing than helpful? Does it matter?
My favorite book, as I've written about before, is not a "Lean book" -- it's Understanding Variation: The Key to Managing Chaos by Donald J. Wheeler, PhD. It might look like a book about statistics...
NPR : What the U.S. Jobless Numbers Really Mean I heard this NPR story via one of their podcasts, the “Daily Shuffle.” The economist makes a great point — when the government releases numbers that say “unemployment fell from 4.8%…