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.
Joe Swartz and I have been working for a while to put together our first onsite Kaizen workshop at his health system, Franciscan St. Francis Health – all day tomorrow and Thursday morning. We’re excited that the workshop / conference sold…
In manufacturing, the term Lean has far too often been synonymous with layoffs. Doing so is more L.A.M.E. than Lean. People get anxious and throw around an acronym LEAN – Less Employees Are Needed. Ironically, Toyota (the inspiration or model for Lean)…
Back in 2007, I had my first opportunity to travel to England, a country I really love visiting. I had the chance to attend the “First Global Lean Healthcare Summit” that was produced by Dan Jones and the Lean Enterprise…
(And Might Not Even Be Real) TL;DR: People sometimes hope for the Hawthorne Effect, treating it like a positive driver of improvement. That was always misguided–because it would only imply short-term gains from attention, not better systems. And to make…
Organizations put up slogans because they want to inspire better performance. The intent usually isn’t the problem. The problem is that slogans assume the issue is with workers’ effort or attitude rather than with the system they’re forced to work…
Mark’s Note: I met today’s guest blogger, Gus Lusack, when I was working with a hospital pathology department in the British NHS. Gus was the microbiology manager at the time and, while most of my engagement was in the core…
In this podcast episode, Jacob Stoller shares insights from interviewing CEOs across industries and explains why Lean succeeds or fails based less on tools and more on culture, leadership humility, and respect for people. The conversation explores what truly distinguishes…
Every time I am in a hospital or clinic setting, one of the first things I do is get a pump or squirt of gel or foam from a wall-mounted dispenser to clean my hands. Or, I should say *try*…
Hi, Dr. Les Muda here. You might know me from DoctorMuda.com and my occasional “guest appearances” here, including the one post I was brave enough to write here at LeanBlog.org under my own name. Be sure to check out my new…
You Still Have Time to Register Update — you can also learn more and register for our April 2016 event via www.KaizenLive.com. Joe Swartz and I have been planning the first-ever workshop (a conference of sorts) where people can come…
My guest for episode #220 is somebody I’ve wanted to interview for a long time, Dr. Robert Wachter, one of the leading voices in the modern patient safety movement. He’s most recently author of a brand-new book The Digital Doctor:…
When we introduce the idea of Lean to healthcare organizations, it’s very common for somebody (often a senior physician) to say something like, “But we don’t want assembly line medicine.” The implication is that assembly lines and factories are cold,…
