Yesterday, Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the U.S. died in a Dallas hospital. As I’ve been following this story, I keep thinking about bad systems and bad processes. Sometimes, there’s a lack of planning and…
Although I’m a proud alum of Northwestern University, a former marching band member, and an ardent follower of our football team (as I’ve written about before), I grew up as a fan of the Michigan Wolverines and have many friends…
Chris Jerry, founder of the Emily Jerry Foundation, continues his conversation on why patient safety demands system change — not blame — and why he chose to publicly forgive the pharmacist convicted in his daughter’s death. Listen to the Episode…
There have been plenty of headlines and updates since I first blogged about the controversy over Lean healthcare in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan (see my previous posts here). From my outside perspective, there are some good things happening. I…
We all know the beaver is “the engineer of the animal kingdom.” That’s why MIT has a beaver as a mascot… It’s an engineer who likes to build things and is generally nocturnal, an apt description of MIT students. A…
Mark’s Note: This is a guest post from an old friend of the blog, Mark Edmondson. See his older guest posts from years back. He originally posted this on the AME website and he agreed to have me re-post it.…
Listen My guest for Episode #203 (and for Part 2 of our discussion in episode #207) is Chris Jerry, founder of The Emily Jerry Foundation. The foundation was created in the aftermath of the tragic death of his daughter, Emily – a preventable…
You might remember that I partnered with Kaizen Institute about two years ago to do their first “Lean Healthcare Study Tour” to Japan. I blogged a bit about the last trip last week. It was a great learning experience, as…
Today is Memorial Day, a U.S. holiday. It’s a day to honor those who have given their lives in military service. Lately, the news has had many reminders about our need to provide better care to our living veterans through…
In further celebration of Nurses Week, it’s worth discussing this TIME article about the “Killer Burden on Nurses” under the Affordable Care Act. The point I’m raising and highlighting here is not meant to be political or partisan, but really…
I’ve really enjoyed reading the book The Essential Deming: Leadership Principles from the Father of Quality, which was published last year. I think this link will work… You can view my public Kindle notes and profile online. If you haven’t read Dr. Deming’s…
tl;dr: This post features a rare 1990 video of Steve Jobs describing continuous improvement in ways that closely echo Lean and Kaizen principles. He challenges “we’ve always done it this way,” stresses that people are smart and should own improvement,…