Tag: Healthcare

Healthcare Improvement Through Lean, Leadership, and Learning

Healthcare improvement isn’t about working harder—it’s about better systems, better leadership, and a culture that supports learning and speaking up. This archive brings together blog posts, podcasts, and reflections on Lean healthcare, patient safety, quality improvement, leadership, and continuous improvement. Many of these posts draw on real hospital experiences and lessons from Deming, Toyota, and frontline healthcare teams, with a consistent emphasis on respect for people and learning from mistakes.

The Magic of Small, Odd Experiments: What Rory Sutherland Can Teach...

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TL;DR: Rory Sutherland's Alchemy is a useful provocation for Lean practitioners. Lean already knows how to test small, low-cost ideas without demanding an airtight...

What a “Perfect” Process Map Missed: A Lesson From Third Shift

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A food company had a flowchart any auditor would love. Every step mapped. Every step mapped. Every critical control point identified. The HACCP plan (Hazard...

A Bar Chart Said 24% Reduction — A Process Behavior Chart...

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Most hospital quality dashboards are designed to answer one question: Are we OK? Green means yes. Red means no. The trouble is, once the...

The Most Expensive Person on Your Unit Is the One You...

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There's a hospital somewhere this quarter presenting a labor efficiency story to its board. A unit that used to have a dedicated charge nurse...

Ryan McCormack’s Operational Excellence Mixtape: May 1, 2026

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Thanks, as always, to Ryan McCormack for this. He always shares so much good reading, listening, and viewing here! Subscribe to get these directly...

Staff Had Concerns: What a Surgeon’s Manslaughter Charge Tells Us About...

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A Florida surgeon, Thomas Shaknovsky, was indicted on a second-degree manslaughter charge on April 13. The charge followed the death of William Bryan, a...

The 8 Wastes of Lean: A Practical Guide (With Healthcare Examples)

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TL;DR: The eight wastes give you a lens for seeing problems -- but Lean isn't a scavenger hunt for waste. The real work is...

The ER Wait Time Metric That Can Hide Deteriorating Patient Experience

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If your emergency department metric improved this quarter and you felt good about it, the problem might not be your emergency department. It might be...

Lean Healthcare Study Tour in Japan: September 2026

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There are things about Lean you cannot learn from a book, a conference, or a consultant. I say that as someone who writes the...

My AI Coach Told Me My Coaching Was Wrong. It Was...

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I asked the Lean Hospitals Coach to role-play as a manager bringing me a problem. Then it evaluated my coaching in real time. Within...

Eric Dickson on Building a Management System That Produced 200,000 Ideas...

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Dr. Eric Dickson spent the early part of his leadership career telling people what to do. It nearly cost him everything. What he built...

She Tried to Build Her Own Lean Coaching AI. Then She...

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I had a long conversation last week with one of the first subscribers to the Lean Hospitals Coach. She's a senior continuous improvement coach...
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