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.
Embryo mix-up worries couples | detnews.com | The Detroit News I’ve seen a lot of news stories about couples who suffer through errors caused by in-vitro fertization labs. A Toledo woman recently gave birth to a baby that was actually…
Running a hospital: MICUs go Lean: Result = Happiness In lieu of a blog post today, I’m leaving you with a recent post on Paul Levy’s “Running a Hospital” blog about Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital. You can see pictures and…
Joint Commission Changes Requirement for Patient ID during Blood Draws | Dark Daily Thanks to my friend Robert Michel and the Dark Daily for bringing this story and issue to my attention. Definitely check out his web site if you…
Lean Forums – Lean Healthcare in Italy I wish I was attending, but I was asked to pass along this info about a Lean Healthcare conference that’s being held in Genova in December. The link above goes to the Lean…
While in Boston, I’m getting the chance to sit in on some sessions of an MIT Seminar in Healthcare Systems Innovation. Today, the session that focused a lot of Lean as a means to improve quality and cost. Lean is…
I was recently interviewed by a reporter at Becker’s Hospital Review and these are the articles, linked below, written for a hospital and operating room audience. 5 Key Principles for Hospitals From Toyota’s Lean Production System This first article came…
I recently invited questions for Michael Balle, the author of the Shingo Prize winning book The Gold Mine: A Novel of Lean Turnaround. He has a new book (published by LEI, my employer), recently published, called “The Lean Manager.” Here…
Sacramento-area hospitals use simple ways to cut mistakes – Sacramento Bee This article has some great examples and an endorsement of the Lean mindset in healthcare without ever using the words “Lean” or “Toyota.” I call this the “Like Lean”…
I really enjoyed this PBS interview with with Dr. Jim Yong Kim, formerly of Harvard Medical School and now the new President of Dartmouth College. About 4 minutes into the video (or you can read the transcript). Dr. Kim does…
tl;dr: Many people misuse the 5 Whys by asking five loosely related questions rather than a sequential chain of cause and effect. Real root cause analysis requires disciplined logic–each “why?” should build directly on the last. This post explains how…
Books – One Injury, 10 Countries – A Journey in Health Care – Review – NYTimes.com I think this book,The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care, will go into the “to read” queue.…
Our friends at ThedaCare are running an experiment this week. One of their Rapid Improvement Event team members is going to send a few Twitter updates about the process for their event. In healthcare “R.I.E.” is a commonly used term…
