On Twitter last week, Tom Peters wrote: This is the wrong premise – it’s not that doctors (and nurses, for that matter) aren’t smart or that they haven’t been taught that hand hygiene is important. The right question should be…
Thanks to my friend Amber for telling me about Dr. Atul Gawande’s interview on NPR’s Morning Edition yesterday. Regular readers of the blog will know I’m a huge fan of Gawande’s previous books Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect…
Language that undermines Lean, respect for people, and real improvement TL;DR: The words Lean leaders use matter–some common phrases quietly reinforce command-and-control thinking, fear, and misunderstanding rather than learning and improvement. If Lean is truly about respect for people and…
Happy New Year to my blog readers! Do you have any “lean resolutions” for the year 2010? Feel free to share them, if you like, in the comments section for this post. Here were some resolutions from two years ago,…
My blogging will be relatively light this week, given some holiday time off, family visiting, and a short trip for New Year’s. There’s nothing lazier, I guess, than linking to a reader comment, but I had a new comment from…
Obama Awards Budget-Minded Federal Employee I saw this in the news yesterday about a federal employee from the VA, Nancy Fichtner, a clerk at the Grand Junction Veterans Medical Center. President Obama awarded her the “SAVE award,” which stands for…
Article Link: “Shorter hospital stays through better coordination” Is Lean a global phenomenon, or what? Here is a story from a Korean news website (in English) about a German consulting firm that’s an offshoot of a manufacturer (Porsche) helping hospitals…
Paul Levy on Transparency, Social Media, and Quality Following up and continuing this morning’s post about MemorialCare. You can also read my notes and comments from Day 1 here. You probably know Paul as CEO, blogger, and twitter user. I’ve…
‘It’s all about process’: Saint Mary’s Steve Palmreuter targets waste Here is an article that might serve as an inspiration for those of you who are looking to make a career transition from manufacturing to healthcare. The linked news article…
In Pursuit of Elegance | My Own Tiger’s Tale What does Tiger Woods have to do with Lean Thinking and hospitals? Read on… Our good friend, Matthew May, met Tiger Woods at his health club in California back in 2001.…
I had a great opportunity a few weeks back, seeing former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich give a talk at the Ontario Hospital Association annual event in Toronto. I had a chance to meet him briefly and had a…
This episode is a discussion with Joan Wellman, of the consulting firm Joan Wellman & Associates. Joan is a real pioneer in the lean healthcare arena, having started her initial work with a hospital in 1995 — I haven’t found…
