Here is a link to a story that caught my eye: “Wait times shrink in Brockton hospitals’ emergency rooms.” The good: “time spent waiting to see a doctor in emergency rooms at Brockton’s hospitals is down, according to officials and…
This is the first Lean article or case study I recall seeing about a German hospital: “JACR: Lean Six Sigma increases MRI productivity.” The article clearly articulates the benefits for patients, staff, and the hospital – University Hospital Giessen and…
Last week, I posted a podcast with Mike George, founder of Strong America Now, an organization that is promoting Lean and Six Sigma methods to our political leaders and government. Much of the discussion, maybe unfortunately, was focused on Mr.…
Back in the manufacturing world, the distinction between “push” and “pull” is often much more obvious than it is in healthcare. Push production occurs when products are built based on the forecast were something other than actual customer needs. In…
I’ve posted a new video on YouTube, about 5 minutes of sections of a presentation I gave at the 2010 Shingo Prize Conference on Lean Healthcare. To have me come to your event or organization, click here for more details.…
Here is a video from the St. Louis Beacon (actually, an NPR-style audio story with pictures) about Lean healthcare at Virginia Mason Medical Center, in Seattle, and Barnes-Jewish Hospital, in St. Louis. A few comments on what’s generally an excellent…
The website HK News Watch published an article called “Hospitals take initiative to tackle long waits” that describes efforts to use Lean and kaizen to reduce patient waiting times. The article describes waste and waiting time that would familiar to…
The full article requires a subscription, but John Toussaint and I were each quoted in this article from last Friday: “Toyota techniques drive profit, efficiency gains at Moffitt.” As with many of these articles, the full story tells a picture…
I was traveling yesterday, so I read a number of blog posts that I kept open in my browser for my flight. I wrote an unusually high number of blog comments on other sites yesterday, so it ended up feeling…
Here’s a great essay from Tom Peters, a chapter from his book The Little Big Things: 163 Ways to Pursue EXCELLENCE. The email that was forwarded to me with this content said, “Sharing is permitted,” so if you like this…
One of the books that’s had the biggest impact on my work is Donald Wheeler’s Understanding Variation: The Key to Managing Chaos. It’s the best guide for applying simple and powerful “statistical process control” (or SPC) practices to management data…
Here’s a great article with a number of quotes from William Considine, the CEO of Akron Children’s Hospital in Ohio. The article, from the Akron/Canton Smart Business publication is titled “William Considine embraces Lean Six Sigma to improve Akron Children’s…
