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.
Hat tip to my friend Jack for pointing out these short videos from the Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative (PRHI) that they call “Teachable Moments.” The first video I saw was just about 3 minutes long, perfect for YouTube and Twitter-era…
I had the opportunity to finally meet “e-Patient Dave” at the HIMSS conference about 10 days ago, where he spoke on the topic of patient involvement and the patient’s right to their own medical data. As he describes on his…
Last July, I was fortunate to be invited to give a guest lecture at the MIT EdNet / Lean Advancement Initiative’s Lean Healthcare Academy. Here is a link to my 40-minute talk. Hope you enjoy.
Here’s one to ponder and comment on – does putting a pharmacist in jail for six months and ruining his career and life do anything to bring back a two year-old girl? Does it do anything to make future patients…
The final keynote talk at the recent Society for Health Systems / ASQ Healthcare conference was given by Dr. Barry Silbaugh, a former hospital executive and the current CEO of the ACPE – The American College of Physician Executives. Silbaugh…
After two visits and gemba walks, I’ve become a big fan of the Lean work that’s taking place at VIBCO, a manufacturer in Rhode Island. The best thing that I’ve seen is not the use of Lean tools, but the…
I’m about conferenced out! First was the excellent SHS/ASQ conference on healthcare operations improvement (read my posts), then the HIMSS conference focused on heathcare information systems, now the LEI Lean Transformation Summit that starts today (follow our tweets). As a…
Last Friday at SHS/ASQ, I heard a talk by Michael Riordan, the CEO of the Greenville Hospital System in South Carolina. He is one of what must be a very small number of Industrial Engineers who made it to the…
On Friday, I co-presented at the Society for Health Systems / ASQ Healthcare Division conference in Atlanta. It was the first time this was done jointly and it seemed we had more physicians and other clinical people around, which is…
Earlier this morning, I attended a presentation at SHS/ASQ about Lean implementation in multiple emergency rooms in a large health system. There were a lot of positives and one red flag that I heard that might be worth discussion.
I’ve always enjoyed my discussions with Sami Bahri, D.D.S., the “World’s First Lean Dentist.” One concept he talks about, most recently in our video podcast, is the application of the Lean concept of “single-piece flow” to dentistry and his patients.…
TL;DR: Standardized work, influenced by Toyota and Dr. Atul Gawande, is crucial for improving safety, quality, and efficiency in healthcare. It should be created by those who do the work, be flexible, and serve as a basis for continuous improvement.…