tl;dr: Small healthcare technology failures–like broken e-check-in, inaccurate text reminders, and wrong clinic addresses–create unnecessary confusion for patients. These issues aren’t about advanced tech; they’re about basic customer focus, clear communication, and fixing broken processes instead of layering on more…
In the third and final part of this series, I share more about how Toyota teaches about TPS and TQM... and how they are sharing that approach with doctors and hospitals.
Last week, I wrote about the influence of Total Quality Management (TQM) on Toyota -- in the past and the present, in Japan and beyond. Today, to follow up on that, I'm going to share some excerpts from some material that was shared by a Toyota leader who presented at a hospital I visited earlier this year as part of the Kaizen Institute-organized Japan trip.
Joining me for Episode #296 of the podcast is Zeev N. Kain, MD. MBA, FAAP. He is a physician and a Chancellor's Professor at the University of California, Irvine.
He has many additional roles and titles, including:
Director, System Redesign & Value Based Care for the UC-Irvine Health Policy Research Institute
Executive Director of the UCI-Yale Center on Stress & Health
President of the American College of Perioperative Medicine
Dr. Kain is "recognized as an international expert in the clinical management of perioperative fear and anxiety, and management of children undergoing invasive medical procedures. His research addresses major dilemmas encountered in the management of affected children."
He's also an advocate for Lean and Six Sigma and the connections to reducing "clinical variation" in healthcare. So, that's what we're talking about today.
Thanks to those of you who sent me this HBR article: Doctors Feel Excluded from Health Care Value Efforts Long story short… brought to you by Bain consultants: Doctors don’t like being excluded and organizational satisfaction goes up when you…
It's been just over six years since I joined the team at KaiNexus, serving in various capacities over that time. As I like to say, even though I don't work full time with the company, I have a full commitment to the company, the team, and their approach.
The company has grown by leaps and bounds, adding customers not just in healthcare, but in other industries. You can read more about our aggregate customer results here. Recently, our customers just crossed the threshold of a combined one million hours of labor time saved, in addition to over $250 million in financial impact... in addition to quality, safety, customer and employee satisfaction improvements.
Back in 2011, I interviewed the CEO and co-founder of KaiNexus, Dr. Greg Jacobson:
My guests for Episode #282 of the podcast are two continuous improvement leaders from Cleveland Clinic: Dr. Lisa Yerian and Nate Hurle. Lisa is the Medical Director, Continuous Improvement and Nate is the Senior Director, Continuous Improvement.She's a doctor, he's an engineer, and they work together very closely in their efforts to help drive improvement at the Clinic.
A Lean-thinking physician from Canada asks how many people an organization or department should have in a dedicated Lean or continuous improvement function. How much time is needed from staff and managers?
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?
I'm happy to share a link to a white paper that I co-authored for Catalysis (formerly the ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value). The paper is titled: "Lean for Doctors." It's co-authored with Dr. John Toussaint and Dr. Jack Billi.
I get worked up about labeling a troubled surgical department as "a factory," but there are far more important issues of patient safety and hospital culture to be discussed related to a Seattle Times investigative piece.
Are there parallels between medicine and organizations when we look at the tension between heroism and the sometimes boring work of preventing problems and improving things? I comment on an article by Dr. Atul Gawande…
