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.
Again, my apologies for writing about myself today, following up on my post about the upcoming 2nd edition of my book Lean Hospitals: Improving Quality, Patient Safety, and Employee Satisfaction, I have a few more updates and coming attractions to…
Happy New Year! Today, I will have two posts that are embarrassingly self referential. Then back to normal stuff tomorrow. My main announcement is that I’m happy to say that I am working on a revised edition of my Shingo…
As Amazon’s Kindle has gotten more popular, I’ve gotten a lot of questions about when my book, Lean Hospitals: Improving Quality, Patient Safety, and Employee Satisfaction, would be available on Kindle. I’m happy to say that, as of last week,…
Here’s something new to try — a way of giving away a copy of my book Lean Hospitals: Improving Quality, Patient Safety, and Employee Satisfaction. What percentage of Lean Blog readers are from the U.S. (or at least a U.S.…
I was recently interviewed by a reporter at Becker’s Hospital Review and these are the articles, linked below, written for a hospital and operating room audience. 5 Key Principles for Hospitals From Toyota’s Lean Production System This first article came…
I’ve been fortunate and grateful that my book, Lean Hospitals, has received good reviews on Amazon: 5 Star Reviews = 11 4 Star Reviews = 1 This week, I got my first “3 Star” review. That’s fine, I’m not too…
Reminder: I am teaching a two-day introductory workshop called “Key Concepts of Lean in Healthcare.” If you have considered or investigated this workshop, but have not registered, I am interested in your feedback if you would click here for a…
Another interesting discussion that came up during my trip to The Netherlands… my book’s title: Lean Hospitals: Improving Quality, Patient Safety, and Employee Satisfaction (see the 2016 3rd edition). I’d have to admit, the phrase “Lean Hospital” is a tough description…
Doctors praise consultant’s book | News for Keller, Texas | The Keller Citizen This story isn’t important enough to be a main blog post for the morning, but I’ll slip it in here. A reporter did a very nice job…
Lean Leap to Health Care #7 (click for Part #6) by Scott McDuffee “Where is the main entrance? Why do I follow the signs to HERE? Now you are telling me to go all the way down THERE! How far…
Lean Leap to Health Care #5 (click for Part #4) by Scott McDuffee Why do we call a customer a patient in Health Care? Is it because the customer must be patient given all the waiting? After almost two months…
Forgive my horn tooting here, but here is the current list of Amazon’s Top 10 Healthcare Administration books (rankings change frequently). So what I’m thrilled about is that the topic of Lean is apparently in the “mass market” of ideas…