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.
Healthcare – “Writing The New Playbook For U.S. Health Care: Lessons From Wisconsin” John Toussaint just had a piece published in the influential peer-reviewed journal “Health Affairs.” You normally have to pay for the article, but the Lean Enterprise Institute…
Hospital CEOs manage staff time, inventory to cut costs – USATODAY.com It’s nice to see a major publication covering Lean and, especially, Lean in healthcare. This time, it was USA Today who, again, did a better job than the WSJ…
You might remember a 2008 blog piece about early Lean efforts in New Zealand hospital (Dunedin hospital), where the primary aim was reducing patient waiting time. I also previously posted a link to a video about the general emergency department…
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…
Below is a guest post from fellow author and Lean Healthcare practitioner, Naida Grunden. Her book, The Pittsburgh Way to Efficient Healthcare: Improving Patient Care Using Toyota Based Methods, is an outstanding collection of principles and case examples from the…
This is an old story, from May, that I’ve meant to write about for a while. Peter Orszag, the Director of the Office of Management Budget wrote a piece in the WSJ about healthcare. He wrote: The good news is…
I’d like to welcome a new blogger to the Lean Healthcare space: Thomas L. Jackson of Rona Consulting and author of these books: Hoshin Kanri for the Lean Enterprise: Developing Competitive Capabilities and Managing Profit Implementing a Lean Management System…
Sunday, I read this New York Times article about Apple’s “App Store” for the iPhone and iPod Touch (I’ve been a pretty happy iPhone user for the past three months after switching over from BlackBerry). I’m going to try to…
Here are all of the videos, embedded from Fox News. Click here for a page with summaries of each. As of October 2011, you can view the videos on the Fox News website. What is ThedaCare? Paid Less…
This is a big day for Lean in healthcare, as here is a link to FoxNews.com with five longer videos about ThedaCare and their quality and cost improvement efforts (and results). I thought last night’s story (transcript) that aired on…
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…
Area hospitals make strides in quality of care — Page 1 — Times Union – Albany NY The CEO of a health system in New York writes his local paper with reports of Lean success: Northeast Health has adopted a…
