Tag: Healthcare

Healthcare - Creating Value for Patients The benefits of Electronic healthcare records are a polarizing topic with healthcare providers.  Standardization and electronic workflows have their...

Today's podcast is a departure from the usual interview format. As I blogged about last week, the Lean community has lost a young, thoughtful, inquisitive, and reflective member -- Samuel Selay. I regret not having Sam on the podcast to talk about our learning and reflections. He was a guest of Ron Pereira's on the Gemba Academy podcast in 2016, talking about Lean in the Department of Defense. Today, I'm doing a reading of a blog post that Sam wrote for this site back in August. I'm also sharing the audiobook version of his chapter from the book Practicing Lean (which is read by our audiobook narrator). It's not his voice, but it's his words and thoughts. As the Marines say (Sam was an active duty Marine for 13 years), Semper Fi.  There is a GoFundMe page that was set up by Sam's sister-in-law to provide financial support to the family — his wife and four children under 18. I've donated and I hope you might consider doing the same. 

Healthcare - Creating Value for Patient A lot can be done to optimize flow in hospitals without investing in additional staff and infrastructure by using an...

The other day, I saw a post on Twitter that included a few photos related to what's often called Lean Daily Management practices in a hospital. The spirit of my post is not meant to come across as "they're doing it wrong" but more in the spirit of "they're doing a lot of great things, but it would be better if..." If Lean Daily Management is supposed to be, at its core, about identifying opportunities for improvement, I'd hope they wouldn't be offended by my recommendations, but I also don't want to link to the Twitter post or call them out by name. I will pass along private feedback through a channel I have. But, I'm writing a post because what I see here is VERY common in different organizations (not just healthcare).

Tomislav Mihaljevic, MD was named CEO of the Cleveland Clinic just over a year ago, replacing long-time CEO Toby Cosgrove, MD. As I've blogged about (and podcasted about), I've been impressed with the Cleveland Clinic Improvement Model and their approach to continuous improvement, problem solving, and Lean management. Dr. Mihaljevic has written a blog post about the power of "tiered huddles"...

Healthcare - Creating Value for Patient CMAJ summarizes how to improve the quality of healthcare in Canada.  Nothing new here, which begs the question - what...

My guest for Episode #319 is Karen Martin, whose most recent book is Clarity First: How Smart Leaders and Organizations Achieve Outstanding Performance. She was previously a guest on Episodes #151, #190, and #285. Karen is an author of many books on Lean, quality, and performance excellence. She is also a speaker and a consultant with a B.S. in Microbiology from Pennsylvania State University and an M.A. in Education from California State University, Bakersfield. Read her full bio. What is clarity? How can we work toward creating less fog and more clarity in organizations? We'll talk about that, along with a bit of discussion about clarity in metrics, as I write about in my book Measures of Success.

Healthcare - Creating Value for Patient Creating value for patients isn't a "project".  Lean thinking isn't a program you "implement" in a hospital over a...

In the third and final part of this series, I share more about how Toyota teaches about TPS and TQM... and how they are sharing that approach with doctors and hospitals.

Joining me from Sweden for Episode 318 of the podcast is Marcus Hammarberg, author of the fascinating book Salvation: The Bungsu Story: How Lean and Kanban saved a small hospital in Indonesia. Twice. And can help you reshape work in your company. Marcus is a software developer, consultant, lean/agile coach, speaker, and author. He ended up with an opportunity to work with a hospital in Indonesia and he tells that compelling story in the book. How did a huge hole in the roof help trigger a change in culture and results? You'll hear about that and more in this episode. I hope you enjoy it and find it inspirational, as I did.

Healthcare - Creating Value for Patient The legendary quality leader W. Edwards Deming is widely known for his thoughts on statistics and systems.  However, Deming...

Last week, I wrote about the influence of Total Quality Management (TQM) on Toyota -- in the past and the present, in Japan and beyond. Today, to follow up on that, I'm going to share some excerpts from some material that was shared by a Toyota leader who presented at a hospital I visited earlier this year as part of the Kaizen Institute-organized Japan trip.