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.
It’s almost Thanksgiving here in the United States, so I’ll be taking the rest of the week off from the blog to enjoy some downtime with family. Improving operations, usually through Lean, was my main job in different manufacturing companies…
I do a lot of work across the U.S., but I’ve also been very fortunate to work with hospitals, clinics, and health systems around the world over the past 11 years. It started with a few trips to Canada to conduct some…
Thanks again to Cardinal Health for sponsoring the webinar that I did with them and Fierce Healthcare on supply chain best practices from other industries. We’ve also collaborated to create a two-page PDF article that’s a complement to the webinar:…
This story was sent to me by somebody I know with a Lean manufacturing career. It’s shocking, but it could happen anywhere, I suppose. I’m not going to name names… the author of this has allowed me to share it,…
Recently, I wrote about an on-site event that I helped the Iowa Lean Consortium and Mary Greeley Medical Center (MGMC) organize… here is my first post about the morning of that event, if you missed it: Celebrating & Sharing Continuous Improvement…
I recently saw this article, as published in a printed magazine that arrived in the mail via the UNT Health Science Center. The bold headline in the magazine was: FIRST, DO NO HARM I appreciate it when a healthcare organization…
Joining me for Episode #267 is Stephen M. Shortell PhD, MPH, MBA. He is Blue Cross of California Distinguished Professorship, HPM and is a Professor of Organizational Behavior at the University of California Berkeley School of Public Health. He is the director…
Snapping a historic 108-year drought, a small hospital, Chicago Community Use Bariatric Health Services (CUBS), implemented their first employee-driven improvement idea Wednesday night, breaking a long curse.
Mark’s Note: Today’s post is by a new guest contributor, Tom Gormley. I first met Tom in 2009 or 2010 when my wife and I were in Boston for the year. He was in the process of switching into healthcare…
I really enjoyed spending the last two days at Mary Greeley Medical Center in Ames, Iowa the last two days. On Tuesday, there was event planned by MGMC and the Iowa Lean Consortium based on the “Kaizen Live!” site visits that…
Recently, when I posted a bit from the old 1984 NUMMI Team Member Handbook (more still to come on that), it allowed me to connect with Tom Wilson, a retired GM leader who spent time at NUMMI in the 1980s. In…
I saw this article the other day on Deadspin, one of my favorite non-Lean blogs Bill Belichick, head coach of the New England Patriots, got really frustrated with an NFL-provided Microsoft Surface tablet. As with many technology issues, it wasn’t…
