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.
Intel, Motion Develop Tablet PC for Nurses – WSJ.com More news stories via Google. Is this a “siren song” of technology for healthcare? Executives and managers in any industry, it seems, believe in the promise of technology as the solution…
medinnovationblog: Systematic Innovation in U.S. Health Care: Toyota’s Lean Manufacturing Method and Its Application to Health Care A post here from the “medinnovationblog” site. The first one, linked above, gives a pretty good overview of applications of the Toyota Production…
Nissan News | Nissan’s ‘shot in the arm’ for healthcare sector It’s not just Toyota working with the Toyota City hospital or GM helping the University of Michigan hospital… Now Nissan is helping a hospital in the UK: And the…
Business Week Article Here’s a good story about how some doctors offices are trying to reduce backlogs and appointment delays, by adopting lean and operations management methods. As the head of a large primary care department at a Kaiser Permanente…
StuderGroup – Conversations with Quint Studer Another great discussion from Quint Studer’s management blog (I hate to call it a “healthcare blog” because that might keep you manufacturing leaders away). Here is a direct link to a post called “What…
Fatal Dose: Ohio Girl is Killed By Medical Mistake Here is a sad story of a girl’s death due to a hospital pharmacy mistake. Pharmacies oftentimes just repackage and dispense “off the shelf” drugs (such as pills), but they often…
Kevin, M.D. – Medical Weblog: A woman dies after receiving 8 grams of Dilantin I read about this on the blog linked above and the source article is here. A nurse administered an incorrect dose to a patient, TEN TIMES…
From the Northwest Lean Network email listserv, about a week ago: ” I am looking for experiences using lean practices and tools in fruit juice businesses.” I’ve seen a lot of this, people asking for very specific examples of lean…
I’m sure most of you are familiar with or have used the Akro blue bins for organizing parts, tools, or a kanban system. The bins are used all over factories and they are used quite often in hospitals (look in…
Thanks to blog reader Osvaldo for passing this long. If you’ve read Lean Thinking or anything about Wiremold’s lean journey and wondered about Art Byrne, here’s an update on what he’s doing today. Update: An oversight on my part, I…
STLtoday – Business – Story Here is an overview and general awareness article from the St. Louis paper. It’s always nice to see lean (and lean healthcare) in the general media. The goal is to map out and retool processes…
Any of the healthcare readers out there attending the SHS conference in New Orleans in February? If so, send me a message via the email link in the left column, maybe we can have a LeanBlog get together. Please check…
