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.
I’m really looking forward to next week’s Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit in Minneapolis. Who else is going? I’ll be blogging about it Wednesday through Friday – and tweeting at the hashtag #HCSummit12. Say hi if you are there or follow…
Here are links to some more articles I’ve read recently that might be of interest related to Lean, systems, and improvement. The “good news” stories are the last two, of course… AIM: False STEMI activations lead to costs, inappropriate cath…
Episode #146 is a discussion with a returning guest (#54, #62, #72), John Toussaint, MD, the CEO of the ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value. Today, we’re talking about his latest book, recently released, called Potent Medicine: The Collaborative Cure for…
In a recurring feature, here are links to some more articles I’ve read recently that might be of interest: Luxury car program brings cancer patients to treatment in style (KVUE-TV, Austin) – a great non-profit effort started by a former…
Episode #144 is a discussion with Dean Gruner, MD, the president & CEO of ThedaCare, talking about Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) and how ThedaCare is using this approach, along with Lean methods, to improve the coordination of care for patients.
Under Blog Break rules, I’ll just post this article that I was quoted extensively in: “Author: Hospitals can use lean techniques to drive improvements instead of dysfunction,” published in MedCity News. There is one slight error in the piece, where…
For the third year, my good friends at the Lean Enterprise Institute, the ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value, and the Healthcare Value Network are collaborating to produce the Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit. This year, it is being held in Minneapolis,…
March 4 to 10 has been “Patient Safety Awareness Week” from the National Patient Safety Foundation. I’m certainly in favor of patient safety and have worked tirelessly, as have others, to try to improve patient safety from its abysmal starting…
If you’re a gambler and you take my post title literally, you might be thinking, “The odds? The odds are 1 in 7000, or 0.000142857143.” OK, you probably weren’t thinking that many significant digits, but what’s the point of 1…
Congratulations to Dr. John Toussaint and Roger Gerard, co-authors of the outstanding book, On the Mend: Revolutionizing Healthcare to Save Lives and Transform the Industry, for being one of this year’s recipients of the Shingo Research and Professional Publication Award…
Last Thursday’s Journal had a story titled “How to Be a Better Boss? Spend Time on the Front Lines.” The article talks about senior leaders going to see work being done at the front lines. Does this have to be…
In the Lean movement, organizations are often wise to have some variation on a “no layoffs due to Lean” policy, as I’ve written about before. Many healthcare organizations, including ThedaCare, have made this commitment quite publicly. Since Lean is about…