ThedaCare has long been regarded as one of the most influential examples of Lean thinking in healthcare. These posts explore what ThedaCare’s journey actually teaches leaders—about management systems, executive commitment, strategy deployment, culture change, and the fragility of improvement when leadership changes.
Rather than treating Lean as a set of tools or success stories frozen in time, this archive examines real lessons, missteps, evolution, and leadership reflections from ThedaCare and others who have studied or worked with the organization.
Recent lessons from NICU innovation, primary care access, fan safety in baseball, and ongoing VA wait-time gaming This post is a collection of recent updates and follow-ups to topics I’ve written about before–spanning healthcare improvement, patient access, safety in sports,…
Alternate title: “Lean is an Integrated System. Of Course Just Implementing Pieces Leads to Failure.” Throughout the 10 years that I’ve been involved with Lean healthcare efforts, I’ve heard multiple stories of organizations that ended their formal Lean initiatives. They do so, as I’ve been told, because they need to cut costs...
It’s far too common to see somebody with just a little bit of understanding about Lean do things that really shouldn’t be described as Lean at all… in terms of the decisions they are making or the approaches they are…
I’ve gone to Japan twice now with Kaizen Institute to study Lean with healthcare professionals from around the world. I first went in 2012, as a paid attendee, and I went back in 2014 as a partner and co-facilitator to…
Before I head out on vacation, here is a reader question that I am sharing for your input.I’m sharing this with permission and I’m obscuring a few details at their request. Please read and leave a comment below the post.…
Today’s post is a throwback to an essay that I originally wrote for the excellent book Lean-Led Hospital Design: Creating the Efficient Hospital of the Future, where it appears in an appendix with some other contributed essays. You can listen to…
At this year’s Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit (see my summary here) Dr. John Toussaint talked about and introduced his newly released book Management on the Mend, a follow up to 2010’s On the Mend. Summit attendees received a copy of the book, so they’re…
Wednesday was the first day of the 6th annual Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit, being held this year in Addison (Dallas), Texas. I’m here and this year my colleagues Dr. Greg Jacobson and Jeff Roussel from KaiNexus are attending, so please say hi…
In American healthcare, there’s a growing gap between hospitals and clinics that are being innovative and those who are stuck in the “way it’s always been done” mode. For example, innovative primary care clinics are using a combination of better…
Following up on yesterday’s post on seemingly successful experiments with ACOs, here’s another article, from HBR, on “safety huddles” in healthcare: “How Every Hospital Should Start the Day“ I’ve seen some hospitals using daily safety huddles. It sends a powerful message…
You might be considered “wonky” for enjoying the topics discussed here at LeanBlog.org… but that’s fine. This is a safe environment for being wonky about Lean and improvement. From Vox.com, Sarah Kliff normally does a great job covering healthcare topics,…
Back in 2007, I had my first opportunity to travel to England, a country I really love visiting. I had the chance to attend the “First Global Lean Healthcare Summit” that was produced by Dan Jones and the Lean Enterprise…
