Lean Hospitals is about improving patient care, staff well-being, safety, and flow by fixing systems—not blaming people or cutting costs at any price. These posts explore Lean healthcare as a management and leadership system grounded in respect for people, psychological safety, and continuous learning.
Drawing from hospitals, health systems, and frontline clinical work, this archive reflects the core ideas from Lean Hospitals: improvement without layoffs, learning from mistakes, daily problem solving, and leadership behaviors that make sustainable improvement possible in healthcare.
I’m back from vacation and, as with any good vacation, I’m trying to get back into the swing of things with work and the blog. Thanks again to all of my great guest bloggers from the past two weeks. One…
In this month’s installment of the “ASQ Influential Voices” blog series, ASQ President Paul Borawski asked, “Are Quality Professionals Happy On the Job?,” citing a study published in Forbes Magazine that named software quality assurance engineer as the “happiest job”…
Dr. Jaap van Ede, a Dutch journalist and researcher on business improvement methods (such as Lean, Six Sigma, TOC, QRM, and TPM), has posted a summary and review of my book Lean Hospitals. The review is titled “A well-balanced introduction…
It’s been three years since the first edition of my book Lean Hospitals: Improving Quality, Patient Safety, and Employee Engagement was published. The second edition came out last week and I’ve tried to reflect a bit on what has changed…
It’s official – the 2nd revised edition of my first book, Lean Hospitals: Improving Quality, Patient Safety, and Employee Engagement, is now shipping from Amazon.com! Other country sites, like Amazon.ca and Amazon.co.uk don’t have their inventory yet. Ah, paper and…
Today’s post is an update on the 2nd revised edition of my first book, Lean Hospitals: Improving Quality, Patient Safety, and Employee Engagement. The final edits and fully typeset book have been sent to the printer and Amazon currently shows…
The 2nd revised edition of my book Lean Hospitals can be pre-ordered from Productivity Press for a 25% discount. The book should be available in early November. Click here for more details on the discount offer. You can also, if…
I’m in beautiful Traverse City, Michigan for a few days for the Michigan Lean Consortium annual conference. It’s my home state, so it’s great to see the collaboration around lean healthcare and lean, more generally. Michigan, along with other industrial…
I love my Amazon Kindle (I have had a 2nd generation 3G Kindle for about two years). Amazon has recently made the device more “social,” where you can share highlights and notes that you take about a book via Twitter,…
I have a new website for my book, “Lean Hospitals: Improving Quality, Patient Safety, and Employee Satisfaction.” You can check it out at www.LeanHospitalsBook.com. I will be adding details about what is new and revised in the second edition. Let…
As I’m going through revisions of my book, Lean Hospitals, a theme jumps out at me in Chapter 2…. it’s all about trust. The first excerpt says: Gary Convis, a retired Toyota senior vice president who had been one of…
Back in 2011, I shared a draft of the final chapter from the first edition of Lean Hospitals and invited readers to contribute their thoughts on “A Vision for a Lean Hospital.” The responses were thoughtful, insightful, and helped shape…