What’s Your Role in Hospital Quality?

I snapped this pic while visiting a hospital earlier this year. This was out in the cafeteria as part of a series of signs that featured real people talking about their real role in quality.
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.

I snapped this pic while visiting a hospital earlier this year. This was out in the cafeteria as part of a series of signs that featured real people talking about their real role in quality.
A few weeks back, I attended the Society for Health Systems (SHS) Conference in Orlando, where I chaired the Patient Flow track. There were a lot of great speakers and I have a lot of notes and ideas to share.…
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 Care in Cardiac Surgery Using Toyota Production System Based Methodology,” published in the journal of The…

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 Lombardi quote on my hotel key when I checked into a hotel (in Seattle, not Green…

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 episode explores how Toyota used rigorous problem-solving to learn from crisis and emerge stronger. Episode #111…
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 and Dr. Deming’s PDSA cycle… Create Value from jim handyside on Vimeo.

You might remember me blogging about the Indianapolis incident where three babies died after being mistakenly given an adult dose of heparin back in 2007. The same set of failure modes led to a non-fatal overdose of actor Dennis Quaid’s…

I’m going to use this blog post / page to collect published statistics about the impact the Lean management philosophy has had on healthcare quality and patient safety. I will update this over time and this page can be accessed…
I really like Seth Godin’s writing – his blog on marketing is one that I have followed regularly for years and his book Purple Cow is a fun read about creating a service or product that delights and wows your…

The last two days, I’ve been facilitating my LEI workshop called “Key Concepts of Lean in Healthcare.” We had a great group and had a number of people who had a good amount of Lean healthcare experience. To help baseline…
I don’t often do a “cranky blog post,” but I’ve got a head cold (as I write this on 9/30) and I’ve gotten sucked into watching some free online “lean healthcare white belt” training that just makes me want to…

Back in July, e-Patient Dave deBronkart noticed an article in the Health Leaders publication called “Taking On the Cost Drivers.” It inspired him to reach out to me and Alice Lee, from Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center to write…