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.
Listen: My guest for episode #164 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast is Rachelle Schultz, CEO of Winona Health (based in Winona, Minnesota). Rachelle was a part of the CEO panel that I moderated at last year’s Lean Healthcare Transformation…
Reminder: Please take my reader survey and enter to win some Lean prizes. My friends at LEI have a new book out by Judy Worth, Tom Shuker, and Beau Keyte: “Perfecting Patient Journeys.” The book appears to focus on Lean…
tl;dr: “Best Doctors” lists often mislead patients–the fine print literally says they don’t prove who’s best. These rankings boost marketing revenue, not medical quality. Until transparent outcome data is available, patients are choosing based on popularity, not performance. Here is…
Don’t forget my reader survey – share your feedback and have a chance at some great prizes. In November, I blogged about a panel at the Lab Quality Confab that included Dr. Richard Zarbo from Henry Ford Health System (see…
Last year, the Institute of Medicine released its latest report titled, “Best Care at Lower Cost: The Path to Continuously Learning Health Care in America.” The report endorsed Lean as one strategy for improving the problems in our health care…
My guest for episode #163 is Dr. Gregory R. Johnson, the Chief Medical Officer at Parkview Health in Fort Wayne, Indiana. In this episode, we talk about how Parkview is using Lean to cope with today’s challenging environment, how Dr.…
Back in 2007, I published a post about the disparity in pricing for blue plastic bins that are often used for Lean “5S” practices or just for general shelf storage. In 2007, the SAME plastic bin was $4.55 in the…
As he mentioned on his blog, John Toussaint has co-authored a piece that was published in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings: “The Promise of Lean in Health Care” (PDF). John is excited that the article will be read by many physicians,…
Thanks to ASQ for posting an audio interview they did with me last month about my book (with Joe Swartz), Healthcare Kaizen: Engaging Front-Line Staff in Sustainable Continuous Improvements. Listen to the interview (MP3 file – 14 minutes) ASQ also…
Thanks to 24×7 Mag for publishing my piece, targeted a bit toward hospital biomed departments, but I think there’s general applicability: Article link: “To Fix Health Care, We Need More “Kaizen” Health care professionals have plenty of ideas for improvement…
Listen My guest for podcast #160 is Joseph S. Guarisco, M.D., FAAEM, FACEP. Dr. Guarisco is currently Chairman of the Department of Emergency Medicine and System Chief of Emergency Services for the Ochsner Health System. Dr. Guarisco is a keynote…
Last week, the New York Times published a piece called “Don’t Just Talk About Change. Show It,” written by Mick Wilz, an employee at Sur-Seal, a family-owned business in Cincinnati. As part of a Lean initiative (as evidenced by their…
