This edition of Ryan McCormack’s Operational Excellence Mixtape reflects on the systems, leadership, and mindsets required for lasting improvement. From honoring Dr. Lucian Leape’s foundational work on patient safety and system-based thinking, to lessons from GE Aerospace’s Lean transformation, productivity…
The general public still, generally speaking, doesn’t realize how much preventable harm and death occurs in healthcare each year. Efforts like the Dennis Quaid “Target Zero” TV program are trying to educate the public about how common medical harm is…
I’m blogging notes and thoughts as I watch the Discovery Channel documentary by actor Dennis Quaid and others — “Chasing Zero: Winning the War on Healthcare Harm” that first aired April 24 at 8 am EDT. With laptop and…
TL;DR: Patient safety leader Lucian Leape’s critique appears less about Lean itself and more about “L.A.M.E.”–Lean As Misguidedly Executed. True Lean in healthcare prioritizes patient safety, quality, and respect for people; when those are missing, the problem isn’t Lean–it’s how…
In recent years, healthcare has been learning a lot of lessons from aviation — including checklists and “Crew Resource Management,” as written about in the excellent books The Checklist Manifesto and Why Hospitals Should Fly. Aviation has gotten much…
I will try to be careful with this topic, since I’m obviously not a doctor. Criticism of doctors gets thrown around pretty easily around many hospitals, too much so, I think. You sometimes hear blanket criticisms about doctors being difficult,…
I had the opportunity to finally meet “e-Patient Dave” at the HIMSS conference about 10 days ago, where he spoke on the topic of patient involvement and the patient’s right to their own medical data. As he describes on his…
