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.
Thanks to visibility from my blog and my book, Lean Hospitals, I get a number of questions from people about how to transition into healthcare from other industries, people who have great Lean experience in manufacturing or retail, for example.…
Got this question from a reader: After successful application of lean to clinical processes we are moving into the the finance/accounting transaction areas such as A/P and A/R and month end close and are finding a more difficult road to…
Hospitals See Benefits of Lean and Six Sigma Regular readers know I often write about what I termed “L.A.M.E.” — Lean as Misguidedly Executed. The ASQ (American Society for Quality) survey that I linked to at the top probably just…
Hulu – ER: Old Times – Watch the full episode now. Thanks to Bryan to bringing this episode of ER to my attention. I don’t normally watch it, but my wife always DVRs it, so I was able to watch…
TL;DR: “Toyota’s ‘stop the line’ concept is being adapted for healthcare — empowering any staff member to pause a procedure when something seems wrong, before it becomes a harm event. A surgical tech suspects the wrong patient has been brought…
Device Alerts Doctors To Items Left Behind After Surgery – Indiana News Story – WRTV Indianapolis Healthcare is often stuck in the mindset that’s considered outdated in lean manufacturing settings — the old idea that better quality must inherently cost…
Dennis Quaid Takes Oprah To Hospital That OD’d His Babies This might be the first time I’m DVR-ing the Oprah show. Tomorrow, actor Dennis Quaid will talk about the medical errors that nearly killed his twin babies. For the first…
Ah, summits. I once watched Coach Pat Summitt’s Tennessee Lady Volunteers take a 35 to 2 lead against my Northwestern Wildcats in the first few minutes of an NCAA basketball tournament game. That was too big of a deficit to…
Training Within Healthcare (TWI Newsletter) – PDF File It’s been a busy week, helping spread the word about Lean healthcare in Puerto Rico, something I’ll be able to blog about soon. So, I’ll be lazy and post an article I…
Hello from Connecticut…. it’s always fascinating to me to see the spread of Lean healthcare around the world. When I attended the Lean Enterprise Institute global summit on Lean Healthcare in the UK in 2007, they had attendees from 20…
Once again, our guest for Episode #62 is John S. Toussaint, MD, the CEO emeritus of ThedaCare, and CEO of the ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value. Dr. Toussaint is very well known for his leadership of the Lean efforts in…
TL;DR: Toyota stands apart because every employee is empowered to improve their work every day. That combination of respect for people, daily improvement, and visible learning creates better quality, safety, and performance–and it works just as well in healthcare as…
