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.
tl;dr: Lean doesn’t mean “zero inventory” — and it doesn’t mean eliminating waiting rooms either. In both manufacturing and healthcare, low inventory and less waiting are outcomes of capable, reliable processes, not goals to chase through absolutes. For decades, manufacturers…
Yesterday was an exciting day for me, professionally and personally, as I received my first copies of the 3rd edition of my book Lean Hospitals (I’ll stop blogging about the book so much, I promise). This is the fifth time I’ve had…
This episode is sponsored by StoreSMART. My guest for episode #252 is Jordan Peck, a Senior Director in the Center for Performance Improvement at MaineHealth and Maine Medical Center. Jordan and I first met when he was a graduate student…
As the 3rd edition of my book Lean Hospitals is starting to ship, I’m having some great conversations with people about the “State of Lean Healthcare” in 2016 (as much as one can generalize). Two of those conversations about the book…
Now, there’s a story written by an emergency medicine physician, Dr. Brad Cotton, that appears in a publication called “Emergency Medicine News” — FIRST PERSON: ‘We Fired Our Hospital’...
I've written before about the subject of hospitals "flexing" nurses and employees. I've criticized flexing (or the practice of sending employees home early because patient census is low) and I've pointed out that it's not keeping with "Lean" principles to "save money" by sending people home early.
I recently learned that a company called Anderson Continuing Education offers continuing education (CE) credits for nurses related to my book Lean Hospitals. See their page for my book. I am still trying to learn more, but they will sell the book…
As is often the case, I have too many open browser tabs full of articles that I was going to potentially blog about. This slows down my Mac (thanks, Chrome!). So, it’s time for me to clear out my backlog and…
Episode #250… a big round number. 250 podcasts in just under 10 years. Thanks again to Norman Bodek (my first guest and frequent guest) for the idea back in 2006. My goal with the podcasts has always been to showcase…
You might remember the hubbub (and my earlier blog post) about this article that somehow appeared in the NEJM: “Medical Taylorism.” It’s sad and frustrating that people so often talk past each other in these different “debates” about Lean. Drs. Groopman and Hartzband…
I’m always happy to see success stories where healthcare organizations solve problems that matter through Lean concepts, practices, and principles. Today, I’m blogging about two articles I saw about this recently. One of the problems that needs to be solved…
Mark’s Note: This is another guest post by Drew Locher (check out past posts and my podcast with him). There’s been a lot in the news about “medical error” arguably being the 3rd leading cause of death in the United…
