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.
AME – The Association For Manufacturing Excellence Looks like a great event that AME is running up in Seattle. Virginia Mason has a great reputation as one of the leaders in the lean healthcare world. Here are some articles about…
Conference To Hear How Hospital Saves Time (from This Is Lancashire) I’m sure they are doing good lean healthcare work at this hospital in the U.K.: THE boss of the Royal Bolton Hospital is to be the main speaker at…
Breaking the mold A good overview article is linked above, about applying lean, TPS, and systems thinking to healthcare. Two reports cited in the article: “Building a Better Delivery System: A New Engineering/Health Care Partnership” ($39) “Crossing the Quality Chasm:…
IndustryWeek : Lean Health Care? It Works! Here is a piece from 2003, still incredibly relevant. There is a great story of how lean methods, implemented properly, are good for all stakeholders — the patients, doctors, other employees, and the…
Lean Blog: Early Risers in Healthcare! (My belly aching from March) OK, a new early “low” of sorts. Currently visiting a hospital, patient blood draws start at 3 AM. Even with having to be there that early to observe the…
Private Sector: Safe hospitals Here is another great overview of applying lean to hospitals, including a mention of the excellent DVD, “Good News… How Hospitals Heal Themselves.” “First, we affirmed that striving for zero medical errors or zero hospital-acquired infections…
I’ve been working with “lean healthcare” in my day job for about a year now. I’m giving a presentation on Friday about lean healthcare for a manufacturing audience, and it provided an opportunity to reflect on what I’ve seen and…
DailyKaizen » Quote of the Week Another great historical quote, check out their lean healthcare blog in the link above. “Give so much time to the improvement of yourself that you have not time to criticize others.” -Thomas Jefferson. I…
WOAI: San Antonio News – Woman Dies after Medical Mistake at CTRC An 81 year-old woman died tragically after she was injected with 100cc of air instead of contrast die before a CT scan. The documents also state, “Found to…
Fun day today. Healthcare, maybe more than other industries, is prone to tolerating and institutionalizing workarounds, as Steven Spear has written about. As I’m teaching a hospital lab about lean, we’re not just analyzing and documenting waste – we’re working…
DailyKaizen I don’t know if it’s fair to call the DailyKaizen site a “lean healthcare” blog, I think we can all learn from it as another “lean blog.” This is a blog that had been private within a health system…
One of the core ideas of the Toyota Production System is the recognition that people are indeed human and are therefore fallible (part of the “respect for humanity” tenet of TPS). No amount of “be careful” warnings will prevent all…
