Tag: Emergency

I had a phone conversation yesterday with an emergency medicine physician after her shift at an unnamed hospital in an undisclosed state. She had a...

When I was in Brazil recently (read more), one of the presenters at the Lean Six Sigma Conference was Bruno Kosima, pictured at left....

When I blogged a summary of my recent Brazil trip, I said I'd write more about my visit to a hospital... so here's that...

My guests for Episode #328 are Bette Gardner and Jeff Heil, of the company Breakthrough Learning. Bette is the creator of a fantastic simulation...

Here's a reprieve from posts about my new book Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More. Although I will mention that the book should be available very soon in the Apple iBooks store. And today's post is on themes from the book. Unfortunately, I've had two trips to the emergency room within the past year, due to stomach flu problems. Or, it was possible food poisoning. In cases like these, the doctors aren't really worried about the exact root cause, because the treatment is the same either way. They're treating symptoms. Last Wednesday morning, I woke up early and I was sick. Stomach issues. Fever. I noticed on my Fitbit that my heart rate was elevated above normal levels. I was working from home that day, so I stayed in bed, slept, and rested. I wasn't really able to eat anything and it was hard to get liquids down...

This article was sent by a friend and blog reader from Winnipeg the other day: "ER wait times down, but only slightly" Oh good, the waiting times are down. But what does "only slightly" mean? Have ER wait times gone down in a meaningful way? Or are they just comparing two data points? Is this "down" a matter a signal or is it just noise in the system? These are the types of questions that can be answered by methods in my new book Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More.

I saw this recent article from Malaysia: LEAN Healthcare: Reducing patient waiting times, one small step at a time They put Lean in all caps... it's not an acronym. Anyway, back to the article. Their ministry of health is trying to reduce the typical department length of stay number from five hours to something shorter. And Lean is something they're using to help...

Here is the headline from the Dallas Morning News: "How Toyota improved Parkland Hospital's ER -- with purple lights." I'll give credit to Dr. Fred Cerise, the CEO of Parkland Memorial Hospital, for reaching out to Toyota and TSSC for help...

Let's start by stating the obvious: it sucks to wait 24 hours or more on a stretcher in an emergency department hallway waiting for a real hospital bed. It's sad and frustrating to have a couple of blog readers from Canada send me this story from Quebec: Quebec wants 24-hour cap for patients waiting on stretchers in ERs Barrette says there would be consequences for hospital staff, doctors who don't comply I think there's agreement that waiting 24 hours, 12 hours, or four hours for a bed after an admission is a problem. That's a problem worth working on.

My guest today for episode #284 of the podcast is Dr. Margaret (Margie) Balfour, the lead author of an article, published in the The Joint...

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?

This story was sent to me by somebody I know with a Lean manufacturing career. It's shocking, but it could happen anywhere, I suppose....