I was at the annual HIMSS Conference yesterday, as a guest of the software company FormFast, giving short 10-minute talks about Lean Healthcare to audiences at their booth. It’s fair to say that it’s 10x harder to give a succinct…
It’s sort of cliche’ to complain about long lines at the U.S. Post Office , along with generally surly or disinterested employees. My buddy John sent me an email about a recent experience where the postal employee WANTED to help,…
Here’s a hilarious, yet somewhat sad, story that will instantly resonate with students of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. From Poland — police officers in the town of Bialogard were given a strict quota of writing one ticket per day, or…
Following up my notes from Day 1, I’m sharing my notes from the second full day I attended on Wednesday, December 8 2010. Here, in the last day of the IHI National Forum on Quality Improvement in Healthcare, I saw…
I’ve written occasionally about Lean efforts in government (see a list of posts here). There are formal Lean government efforts at varying levels of maturity and formality in a number of states, including Iowa, Jacksonville, Michigan, and Paul Akers’ LeanAmerica.org…
As I blogged about on Friday, I was back at my alma mater, Northwestern, for a football game this weekend– well, actually, I was at Wrigley Field instead of our usual home stadium. The “confines” of “The Friendly Confines” (as…
This headline jumped out at me: “Local hospital receives $500,000 to train workers.” What also jumped out at me, in the article, is that the money comes from the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (commonly referred to as the…
My guest for Episode #102 is Ron Wince, the President/CEO of Guidon Performance Solutions. We talk here about his views on lean healthcare and the impact of healthcare reform on the healthcare landscape. Prior to founding Guidon, Ron held senior…
I was a supporter of Dr. Donald Berwick‘s nomination to head CMS (Medicare and Medicaid at a federal level) – not due to politics but due to Dr. Berwick’s deep understanding that better healthcare costs less, that the road to…
It’s nice to see examples of Lean Healthcare success in the news, this time on the front page of the Denver Post — “Denver Health saves millions using Toyota efficiency principles.” As the city health system, they are both an…
I guess I have a burr in my saddle this week, being Independence Day and all, since I’m commenting on something from the UK again today. I don’t mean to come across as anti-Brit, as I love the UK. I…
An editorial written by an American Airlines pilot in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram caught my attention (“Unintended consequences of the Passenger Bill of Rights“). The pilot makes the case that the actions of Congress taken to prevent multi-hour passenger delays…
