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.
Follow Royal’s example on waiting lists, hospitals told – Liverpool Daily Post.co.uk Nice story from here in the UK (where I am right now), about an NHS hospital in Liverpool reducing surgery patient backlogs and delays through Lean. From the…
Episode #46 is a chat with a good friend of the Lean Blog, Dean Bliss, a Lean Improvement Specialist with the Iowa Health System. Like myself, Dean made a transition in from manufacturing into health care a few years back,…
Johns Hopkins Gazette | June 9, 2008 From the online newsletter of William R. Brody, president of The Johns Hopkins University. He writes: First, a disclaimer: I don’t own any stock in Toyota and am not going to get any…
Grand Forks Herald | News in area business (scroll down) From a North Dakota newspaper… see if you can spot the part of the article that irritated me: “Training at Villa, Fair Meadow nursing homes A $279,483 grant from the…
Institute for Healthcare Improvement: Getting Lean in the ED Here is a story that includes examples of Lean improvements at Rockford Health System in Rockford, Illinois. “The simulation embodied the difference between a classroom lecture and a psycho-motor experience,” explains…
Doctor takes pulse of Lutheran Health | The Journal Gazette: Here’s an article about Dr. Mike Schatzlein, Chief executive officer for Lutheran Health Network and Dupont Hospital, in Indiana. “Schatzlein believes “lean engineering” – like that employed by manufacturers to…
StuderGroup – The Magic of Rounding Here’s a good article from Quint Studer about “rounding” — something Lean folks might refer to as a “Gemba Walk.” Studer’s writing on leadership and management, although hardly referencing “Lean” or “Toyota,” is pretty…
Peter Pronovost – The 2008 TIME 100 – TIME It’s so nice to see someone like Dr. Peter Pronovost on the “most influential” list, even though he’s out of place among the Miley Cyruses of the world (also on the…
Collaborative Software Initiative The link above is a project that might be interesting to those of you working in “Lean Software”… or those who afraid of problems in our collective ability to track the spread of infectious diseases. From their…
Below is some of the text from edition #3 of the newsletter from my upcoming book Lean Hospitals: Improving Quality, Patient Safety, and Employee Satisfaction. ————————————— Hospitals are notorious for employing “workarounds” to respond to problems. For example, when supplies…
Medical Leave — Offshore Medicine — Fast Company Interesting read here in the latest issue of Fast Company about a hospital in Thailand and one of the visionaries, Ruben Toral, who wants to globalize healthcare. The idea of patients flying…
Slowdown’s Side Effect: More Nurses – WSJ.com: Not a Lean article, but a major issue for hospitals is a shortage of nurses. With the economy in its current condition, more nurses are returning to work. There’s still a need for…