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.
I don’t often go back to write about GM, the first company I worked for out of college. Thanks to my dad who sent this article from the Detroit paper: “GM delays 2nd shift at Detroit-Hamtramck.” You might think, as…
As people first learn about Lean, they often ask questions like “what tools or methods should we use first?” These tools include things like 5S or varied forms of rapid improvement events. As I have heard Jim Womack say, tools…
It’s important not to confuse a proper Lean “gemba walk” with the idea of “management by walking around” (MBWA). What did the late, great Dr. W. Edwards Deming say in 1982? ‘Management by walking around’ is hardly ever effective. The…
Lately, there have been many stories in the news about supermarkets ripping out self-service checkout scanner, stories like this: “Supermarkets start bagging self-serve checkouts.” 10 years ago, the supermarkets saw this technology as a clear cost savings – reducing labor…
As I’m reading the new book by Eric Ries, The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses, I’m reading it with an eye for concepts that can be applied more broadly than traditional startup…
I volunteered to give a presentation last Friday for the North Texas Society for Healthcare Risk Management, where I was able to debut some new material from our upcoming book, Healthcare Kaizen. These continuous improvement methods are a great way…
Some people might find this graphic inflammatory, if they are feeling defensive about the state of healthcare and if they feel like they are being blamed personally. The data in this infographic represents the current state, to the best of…
I’ve been reading the book Obliquity: Why Our Goals Are Best Achieved Indirectly and, while it’s really interesting, I tend to agree with some of the reviews that said there was a lot of repetition of the book’s core concept…
It’s a project that my co-author, Joe Swartz, and I have been working on all year… the manuscript is finally complete and sent (as a big batch!) to our publisher. I’m talking about our upcoming book, “Healthcare Kaizen: Engaging Front-Line…
This is the first Lean article or case study I recall seeing about a German hospital: “JACR: Lean Six Sigma increases MRI productivity.” The article clearly articulates the benefits for patients, staff, and the hospital – University Hospital Giessen and…
It’s been nice to see the “lean design” approach taking hold in healthcare over the past few years. I think the first book on the subject was a “manifesto” by an architect, David Chambers: Efficient Healthcare – Overcoming Broken Paradigms.…
Update: I edited the post title to add “Or Does He?” See the CEO’s comment below, suggesting that the TV report gave the wrong impression and that he wasn’t really “undercover” in a sneaky way like the CBS TV show.…
