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 really enjoyed and appreciated this new white paper that was written by Dr. Lisa Yerian and Nate Hurle from The Cleveland Clinic: “No More Projects: Kick-starting a continuous-improvement culture in healthcare“ The paper was published by Catalysis and is available…
Any rare event creates a number of challenges when it comes to manufacturing and supply chains. We're seeing a pretty historic "spike" in demand for products like the inexpensive glasses that allow one to safety view the eclipse (our friends in the totality zone can look at the totally-eclipsed sun safely, but that's the only time).
You could call it "supply chain challenges" or a "lack of planning on my part," but I cannot find eclipse glasses anywhere. There are MANY articles online about this widespread problem -- it's been impossible to buy "eclipse glasses" anywhere. Why is this? What could have been done?
Today at 3 PM, I'm doing a webinar at the invitation of the BC Patient Safety & Quality Council, as part of their "Quality Café" series. Thanks for the invitation!
It's open to the public and it's titled:
"Standardize What Makes Sense... Then Engage Everybody in Improving What You Standardized"
I hope you can join us...
I’m speaking in Iowa today at a “Lean Healthcare Exchange” event hosted by the Iowa Lean Consortium. Please say hello if you’re there and you’re a blog reader. As part of the prep for the event, I was a guest on…
On Thursday, August 10, I hosted our latest KaiNexus webinar. It’s being presented by Warren Stokes, Director of Process Improvement at HonorHealth, a health system in Arizona. The title of the webinar is: How to Leverage Lean for Long-Term Success (Under…
I was invited to give a talk at a gathering of improvement teams and Kaizen Promotion Offices within the NHS in England. It wasn’t feasible for me to attend in person… and presenting live over the internet would have meant…
Back in 2012, I blogged twice about aspects of Dr. Donald M. Berwick's 1989 article in the New England Journal of Medicine titled “Continuous Improvement as an Ideal in Health Care.” The full text is only available to subscribers.
As I posted on LinkedIn, another aspect of this article caught my eye when I was reviewing it the other day in advance of my talk at the Studer Group "What's Right in Healthcare" conference next week.
One thing I like about Facebook is the way it reminds you about things that happened on this date in previous years. Facebook is reminding me these days about different milestones related to the publication of the book Healthcare Kaizen that…
My guest today for episode #284 of the podcast is Dr. Margaret (Margie) Balfour, the lead author of an article, published in the The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety, titled “Using Lean to Rapidly and Sustainably Transform a…
It's been just over six years since I joined the team at KaiNexus, serving in various capacities over that time. As I like to say, even though I don't work full time with the company, I have a full commitment to the company, the team, and their approach.
The company has grown by leaps and bounds, adding customers not just in healthcare, but in other industries. You can read more about our aggregate customer results here. Recently, our customers just crossed the threshold of a combined one million hours of labor time saved, in addition to over $250 million in financial impact... in addition to quality, safety, customer and employee satisfaction improvements.
Back in 2011, I interviewed the CEO and co-founder of KaiNexus, Dr. Greg Jacobson:
A few of you sent me this sad article from the Wall St. Journal:
"'People Are Dying Here': Federal Hospitals Fail Tribes."
I feel like I've some variation of this article and exposé many times over. Sometimes, it's some form of government medicine (active duty military medicine, the VA, or another country) or it's a similar sad story from the private healthcare sector (be it non-profit or for-profit).
When I first shifted into healthcare in 2005, many people recommended the book Hardwiring Excellence by Quint Studer. I read it and posted a few thoughts about the book, from a then-partial reading, in early 2006: Reading “Hardwiring Excellence” by Quint Studer…
