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. I’m not going to name names… the author of this has allowed me to share it,…
You might remember my post from June about an emergency physician who wrote a journal article bashing “Lean” — but what he described didn’t sound like Lean at all. As I said then: “In the article, Dr. Cotton describes the…
Now, there’s a story written by an emergency medicine physician, Dr. Brad Cotton, that appears in a publication called “Emergency Medicine News” — FIRST PERSON: ‘We Fired Our Hospital’...
There’s been a back-and-forth of views about the state of pediatric emergency medicine recently in the Wall Street Journal. Let me start first, actually, with the more recent statement, a rebuttal from Michael Gerardi M.D., FACEP, President of the American College of Emergency…
Last Wednesday and Thursday, I collaborated with Joe Swartz and a countless number of his colleagues to host 24 visitors from different health systems (and an Indiana state government organization) to learn about the “Kaizen” approach to continuous improvement first hand…
Hospital billboards and health system advertising can be a curious thing. One ad that I see driving between San Antonio and Austin is one that promises: “Serious E.R. Care” Or something like that. I don’t have a picture of it…
I was recently interviewed by one of the reporters who put together this web article in Canada: “From the factory floor to the emergency department: Hospitals explore Lean method” The article highlights Lean success stories and it also raises some…
tl;dr: In this post, Mark discusses the SQDCM framework, which stands for Safety, Quality, Delivery, Cost, and Morale. He examines how focusing on these five key performance indicators can holistically improve an organization. Drawing on Lean principles, Mark argues that…
When I started blogging here in 2005, I was still about six months away from my transition from “lean manufacturing” to “lean healthcare.” It was mind boggling and disturbing to me to learn about the healthcare quality and patient safety…
PBS has aired a documentary about an Emergency Department in East Oakland, CA. You can visit the website for the film and you can also view it via YouTube: It’s a very spartan documentary… sometimes dull and routine, sometimes compelling.…
Thanks to the organizing sponsor Protegra and other sponsors, including my friends at LeanKit, for having me give a keynote talk about the Software Development and Evolution Conference (SDEC) 2013 Conference in Winnipeg yesterday (Storify summary here). I always enjoy…
You might recall that I interviewed Dr. Joe Guarisco for episode #160 of my podcast series, talking about operations improvement and emergency department patient flow. I was invited by the American Academy of Emergency Medicine (AAEM) to interview Dr. Guarisco…