Tag: Quality

Quality: Leadership, Systems Thinking, and Continuous Improvement

Quality doesn’t come from inspection, pressure, or choosing between speed and accuracy. It comes from well-designed systems, capable processes, and leaders who focus on learning instead of blame. This archive brings together blog posts, podcasts, and reflections on quality through a Lean and Deming lens—covering psychological safety, metrics, variation, leadership behavior, healthcare quality, and why sustainable improvement depends on fixing systems rather than managing people harder.

Vote for Real Healthcare Leaders in Modern Healthcare’s “Most 100 Influential”...

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Vote for this year's "Modern Healthcare's Most 100 Influential" list. Click here. Sadly, Dr. John Toussaint is not on the list of nominees. I voted for...

Guest Post: Relying on Culture or Technology to Improve Patient Safety?

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Today's post is from my friend Naida Grunden, author of the outstanding book The Pittsburgh Way to Efficient Healthcare: Improving Patient Care Using Toyota...

HealthLeaders Article: Systemwide Process Improvement

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It's great to see Lean mentioned in mainstream healthcare management publications, such as the article in HealthLeaders (print and online) called "Systemwide Process Improvement."...

When Steering Wheels Fly Off: Questions About Blame, Process, and Learning

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In the news yesterday, a General Motors recall over what could be just one isolated steering wheel problem in an Ohio-built Chevrolet (don't call...

What’s Your Role in Hospital Quality?

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I snapped this pic while visiting a hospital earlier this year. This was out in the cafeteria as part of a series of signs...

From SHS: Ohio Health Reduces Surgical Site Infections Using Lean

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A few weeks back, I attended the Society for Health Systems (SHS) Conference in Orlando, where I chaired the Patient Flow track. There were...

Lean Methods to Improve Cardiac Surgery Featured in Annals of Thoracic...

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Hat tip to my friend and fellow Productivity Press author Naida Grunden for pointing out an article she is a co-author on, "Improving Patient...

Coach Vince Lombardi on Striving for Perfection

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I apologize to those of you who aren't fans of American football... but in keeping with the Super Bowl theme, I found this Vince...

Jeffrey Liker on Toyota’s Crisis, Recalls, and the Real Test of...

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Jeffrey Liker explains why Toyota's recalls were not a failure of the Toyota Way, but a breakdown in listening, speed, and customer understanding. The...

Video on Creating Value in Healthcare

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Here's a video produced by Jim Handyside, embedded here with his permission. More inspirational than educational, there are still some concepts related to Lean...

Let’s Sign Documents Promising Not to Make Errors?

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You might remember me blogging about the Indianapolis incident where three babies died after being mistakenly  given an adult dose of heparin back in...

Collected Quality and Patient Safety Improvement Statistics – #Lean Healthcare

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I'm going to use this blog post / page to collect published statistics about the impact the Lean management philosophy has had on healthcare...
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