Thanks go to Hakan Forss, from Sweden, who sent me a link to an article he wrote about Lean, waste, and patient flow. He compares two healthcare systems–one that focuses on keeping silo-ed resources busy (which leads to long patient…
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…
Mark’s Note: Today’s post is a guest post that’s written for manufacturing settings. But, I’d challenge healthcare readers to think about how the impact of wasted motion and time for nurses and other healthcare professionals running around to get their…
Last week, an article in the Wall Street Journal caught my eye: “The Robots Are Coming to Hospitals: A New Breed of Blue-Collar Robots is Handling the Dirty Work, Transporting Linens and Laundry.” My immediate short response was to tweet…
March 11, 2012 — daylight savings time starts and it’s time to revisit this post from August 2011… and to set the date and time on my stupid microwave. I’ve heard it as a good data collection rule of thumb…
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…
Here’s a funny little story I saw on ESPN today (Nicklas Grossmann reveals extra ‘n’). Apparently when former Dallas Stars’ defenseman Nicklas Grossman entered the league in 2006, it was assumed his name was spelled Grossman with one ‘n’ (see…
Mark’s Note: Today’s post is a guest post from a new blogger, Chad Walters. Chad and I share a strong interest in sports — me as a fan and Chad as somebody who is working to bring Lean thinking to…
This time of year, every publication under the sun (print and web) has a “Holiday Gift Guide” to share. In that spirit, I am happy to present the first Lean Blog Holiday Gift Guide. This guide is a mix of…
Here is the third short, simple Kaizen education video from KaiNexus. We are embedding these videos into our web-based software, to provide short tips and hints for our healthcare users. We’re also making the videos available on our YouTube Channel and our education videos playlist. Subscribe…
In honor of Veterans’ Day (in the U.S.) and Remembrance Day (in Canada, where I spent most of the last two weeks, often wearing a poppy pin), let’s pause to honor those who have served their country. Let’s also maybe…
The “Strong America Now” initiative has proposed there are opportunities to save $500 BILLION a year from our U.S. federal government budget by using Lean and Six Sigma methods (I interviewed Mike George, the founder of the campaign here in…
