Patient safety doesn’t improve through punishment, vigilance posters, or telling people to “be more careful.” It improves when leaders design safer systems, support speaking up, and focus on learning instead of blame. This archive brings together blog posts, podcasts, and reflections on patient safety through a Lean lens—exploring medical errors, near misses, psychological safety, leadership behaviors, and how healthcare organizations can reduce harm by fixing systems rather than blaming individuals.
TL;DR: Wrong-side surgery is a system failure, not just human error. Fear, silence, and lack of psychological safety allow mistakes to be hidden–making repeat harm more likely. I don’t post every episode of the My Favorite Mistake podcast here, but…
Thanks as always to Ryan McCormack for this… there’s always so much good reading, listening, and viewing shared here by him! News, blogs, articles, resources, and links about creating value, continuous improvement, innovation, and leadership. Healthcare – Creating Value for…
A story shared by Dr. Marty Makary reveals how hospital silos and lack of ownership can allow obvious safety risks to persist — even after someone dies. Editor’s note (2026): This story is from a 2021 post, but the lesson…
tl;dr summary: Lean isn’t just efficiency… it’s safety, quality, delivery, cost, and morale. People often misunderstand that — they don’t know or they were taught the wrong things I often have the opportunity to teach a group of experienced healthcare…
Thanks as always to Ryan McCormack for this… there’s always so much good reading, listening, and viewing shared here by him! Healthcare – Creating Value for Patients What have doctors learned about treating Covid-19 in the last year? Plenty. Some…
Today, I’d like to share some recent episodes from these two podcast series… Habitual Excellence Here are some of the latest episodes from this podcast that I host for Value Capture. Dr. David Mayer: A Moon Shot for Zero Patient…
Thanks as always to Ryan McCormack for this… there’s always so much good reading, listening, and viewing shared here by him! Healthcare – Creating Value for Patients It is said that “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail”. …
Thanks as always to Ryan McCormack for this… there’s always so much good reading, listening, and viewing shared here by him! Healthcare – Creating Value for Patients Striving for zero harm is becoming more widely accepted in healthcare. Here, an…
Thanks as always to Ryan McCormack for this… there’s always so much good reading, listening, and viewing shared here by him! Healthcare — Creating Value for Patients Listening may be a one of the most important skills of diagnosis. Our patients…
Thanks as always to Ryan McCormack for this… there’s always so much good reading, listening, and viewing shared here by him! One more note from Mark: Check out Episode 32 of “My Favorite Mistake” with consultant Michele Parrish as our…
I post here a lot about my most recent podcast series, “My Favorite Mistake,” but my first pandemic podcast project was a collaboration with the firm Value Capture. It’s a podcast series called “Habitual Excellence,” using a phrase from Paul…
Today is the World Health Organization “World Patient Safety Day 2020.” Patient safety is not just an American healthcare issue — see some statistics I have compiled over the years. At one point, the per capita rate of people killed…
