TL;DR: Lean is often misunderstood. It’s not about rushing patients, cutting staff, or blindly installing tools. When practiced properly, Lean is fundamentally patient-centered, focused on safety, quality, and respect for people. When organizations have bad experiences, that usually reflects poor…
Mark’s note: Today’s post is written by Gary Passama, the CEO of NorthBay Healthcare in northern California. He is an active blogger on the hospital’s blog and he has written about Lean a few times. As he mentions in this post,…
Two pet peeves of mine are hearing people say things like “Lean is all about reducing waste” and or “Lean is all about cost cutting” (and thankfully others are also trying to dispel that myth). Another pet peeve is people…
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…
Thanks to a Google News Alert email, I get news stories (on a daily basis) about hospital layoffs around the country. Many of the articles feature an executive making a reassuring sounding comment along the lines of: “Although we have…
Mark’s note: Ah, another NFL playoff weekend and time for another football post to follow up my apparent jinxing of the Eagles’ head coach Chip Kelly last week. Today’s guest post from Chad Walters is an intersection between sports, medicine,…
I’ve re-read this article a number of times: “Cancer clinics are turning away thousands of Medicare patients. Blame the sequester.” It’s a sad situation – the federal government, via Medicare, has cut the reimbursement to cancer clinics for chemotherapy treatment…
While Lean is not primarily a cost-cutting methodology (or, we could say it’s not focused ONLY on costs), cost reduction is a common end result of improving safety, quality, flow, and other factors. Since 60 to 70% of a hospital’s…
This week, I was able to drop by the annual Lab Quality Confab event since it was being held in here in San Antonio. There were some things I heard during a few presentations about Lean or change management, such…
Almost two years ago, I wrote an article for FierceHealthcare.com called “How lean management helped hospitals avoid layoffs.” Here in 2012, I see headlines daily about a hospital somewhere in the U.S. who is “forced” to lay off staff (or…
I’m in Las Vegas, speaking today to close the Lean Healthcare PowerDay event. There are many great speakers, including Dr. Richard Shannon, Dr. David Munch, and my good friend and fellow author, Naida Grunden. Click on their names to listen…
Back by popular demand, here are links to some more articles I’ve read recently that might be of interest on a number of Lean related topics: Potent Medicine Delivers a Treatment Plan for U.S. Health Care (new book from Dr.…
