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.
MD Anderson Cancer Center shares a lot of great material online and at conferences. here is an audio presentation (with slides) by Doris Quinn, PhD, Director, Process Improvement and Quality Education titled: W. Edwards Deming: The Man and the Message.…
Thanks to Healthcare Finance News for interviewing me for this piece they ran this week: “7 ways lean healthcare management reduces cost.” As I think the piece conveys, cost reduction comes as a result mainly from methods that are different…
Preventable medical mistakes remain one of the most serious challenges in healthcare, yet many hospitals still struggle with learning from medical errors and preventing them from happening again. From emergency departments to pathology labs, the same types of errors continue…
In the “Lean Startup” parlance, our startup KaiNexus is not going into an existing market – we are working to develop a new market (for improvement management software). We have competitors – but they tend to be Excel, SharePoint, and…
Most of us think of Kaizen as a workplace method. Robert Maurer applies it to therapy, health, and relationships — and the brain science he describes explains a lot about why change efforts fail at work, too. We talk about…
The PDSA cycle (Plan, Do, Study, Adjust) is at the heart of Lean problem solving. Most of these mistakes cluster in the Plan phase, where the temptation to skip ahead is strongest. A few live in Study and Adjust, where…
In this post, I’d like to share a nice 7-minute video from St. Clair Hospital in Pittsburgh, showing the transition from an inefficient “par level” system (that often led to stock outs for nursing supplies) to a two-bin kanban system…
Thanks to the guys at Quality Digest… I was on their weekly video show “Quality Digest Live” last week, talking about “Healthcare Kaizen.” You can view the archived video here (click on the July 6 episode if that doesn’t play…
As a frequent flyer on American Airlines, I often have five or six itineraries booked at a time. Unfortunately, the poor design of the American Airlines website includes the risk that I might cancel the wrong itinerary and flight. The Lean principle of mistake proofing would go a long way... and I'm sure a simple bit of programming could easily alleviate this risk.
My mom is a retired public school elementary teacher, so I’ve heard plenty of stories about bad management decisions within a school system and other craziness that runs the risk of crushing souls… but thankfully my mom (and so many…
Thanks to my good friend Dean Bliss of the Iowa Healthcare Collaborative. You might recognize Dean as a frequent commenter here on the blog or you’ve heard my podcast with him (when he was with the Iowa Health System). Here…
It might only be free (brief registration required) for a limited time, but there’s a great video of Dr. Kaplan (with his slides) talking about Lean and the challenges facing healthcare (content no longer available for free). In his introductory…
