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 wanted to remind you about an online event I’m presenting for Thursday afternoon and tell you about a new event (local to Dallas) that I’m attending Thursday night. THE DARK REPORT presents: How To Find And Eliminate All The…
Last year, I conducted a survey in advance of my book, Lean Hospitals. I’ve been a bit lax about sharing some of the results that I didn’t include in the book. One question was about the use of “events.” As…
Hospitals try automakers’ practice of building efficiency in effort to trim costs | The Detroit News | detnews.com Here’s a good overview article about some Lean activity going on in hospitals around the Detroit area. I can understand the bias…
Bedside Manner: Advocating for a Relative in the Hospital (WSJ) WSJ Health Blog (free): Five Tips for Helping a Family Member in the Hospital I’ve written before about my questions of why so many hospitals abdicate their leadership responsibility for…
The Dark Report presents a new audio conference on November 13, 2008… For those of you in hospital labs (not sure what percentage of my readership falls into that category), you might be interested in the following upcoming audio conference…
Hospital aims for shorter wait times | Otago Daily Times Online Here’s today’s positive blog post. For cynicism and negativity on a different Lean topic from yesterday afternoon, scroll down or click here. Be warned, the article I blogged about…
Neatness Counts at Kyocera and at Others in the 5S Club – WSJ.com I’m going to violate a rule I have to try not to blog when I’m frustrated or angry. Here goes… Today’s front page (argh, front page) article…
Kevin Meyer, over at Evolving Excellence, recently wrote a good piece on “endorsing” a U.S. presidential candidate. Today, I’m technically Constitution-eligible to be President of the United States, as I’m now 35 years young. However, I’m not nominating myself to…
Moonlighting county docs raise questions :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: The Watchdogs OK, this isn’t strictly a Lean issue, but this caught my eye in the paper near where I’m working. Regarding county doctors who work in the E.R. (think the…
Healthcare Intelligence Network » Blog Archive » Eight Steps to a Culture of Safety I think words matter. Action matters, also, but the words we use do matter (not that I always choose them well here). Hospitals often use different…
Children’s Hospital is going lean – The Business Journal of Milwaukee: Wisconsin is a state that seems to have a disproportionate amount of Lean activity (as does Iowa). There are many good Lean manufacturers and ThedaCare is often held up…
Mass General cuts 200 jobs – Daily Business Update – The Boston Globe Times are tough, financially, for many organizations — hospitals included. About two weeks back, a Lean specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston posted on the Yahoo…