Lean Blog Audio: Practical Lean Thinking, Psychological Safety, and Continuous Improvement

There are Dr. W. Edwards Deming quotes that get thrown around... one that sounds incredibly "pro-data" and others that say data and measures are not the only thing... which is it? How do you reconcile that?

An article from this week in 2010... Today's New York Times has an outstanding article about Lean Healthcare and what Seattle Children's Hospital calls C.P.I. or Continuous Performance Improvement.

The article: "Factory Efficiency Comes to the Hospital"

I wish the headline had also addressed quality, waiting time, and staff engagement, but the article body does, at least. The article highlights Seattle Children's Hospital, as well as others, including members of the Healthcare Value Network (Park Nicollet, Akron Children's, and Paul Levy's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center), and Virginia Mason Medical Center. Yours truly is quoted in the article, as well.

A few of you sent me this sad article from the Wall St. Journal: 

"'People Are Dying Here': Federal Hospitals Fail Tribes." 

I feel like I've some variation of this article and exposé many times over. Sometimes, it's some form of government medicine (active duty military medicine, the VA, or another country) or it's a similar sad story from the private healthcare sector (be it non-profit or for-profit).

In this post, I write about a phrase that I heard many times when visiting Franciscan St. Francis Health in Indianapolis. How can this phrase help us challenge ourselves and to find positive solutions instead of barriers and obstacles?

Does the Phrase "Lean Transformation" Jump to a Solution?

Another in the series of "do words matter?" posts... do phrases like "Lean Transformation" resonate as much as "Business Transformation?"

Imitation as a Path to Innovation... If You Know What to Copy...

At the recent Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit, there were thought provoking presentations... and we had many discussions about the role of incremental improvement vs. redesign or transformation. And, lots of discussions about imitating vs. innovating... so I explore those themes in this post.

If we're going to practice Kaizen (continuous improvement), do the words matter? Should we call it a Kaizen Card or something else? Do we start with a "problem" or something else? Are we writing down "ideas" or "countermeasures?" Does it matter?

What if "easier" is less safe? Great question. It begs the question of why Safer isn't first in Shingo's list? Is it because safety is assumed to be such a fundamental pre-condition in the Toyota culture or the Lean approach? Safety is such a non-negotiable point that it doesn't need to be said?

Does your healthcare organization struggle with keeping hand sanitizer dispensers full? Let me know what you think of this "two-bin kanban" system prototype from a vendor that might more forward on this...

Thanks to Lean Frontiers for sharing a story from Mike Hoseus on LinkedIn. Mike is, of course, co-author of the excellent book Toyota Culture: The Heart and Soul of the Toyota Way (written with Jeff Liker, who I just learned is retiring from the University of Michigan... more on that soon).