Tag: Healthcare

Healthcare - Creating Value for Patient CMAJ summarizes how to improve the quality of healthcare in Canada.  Nothing new here, which begs the question - what...

My guest for Episode #319 is Karen Martin, whose most recent book is Clarity First: How Smart Leaders and Organizations Achieve Outstanding Performance. She was previously a guest on Episodes #151, #190, and #285. Karen is an author of many books on Lean, quality, and performance excellence. She is also a speaker and a consultant with a B.S. in Microbiology from Pennsylvania State University and an M.A. in Education from California State University, Bakersfield. Read her full bio. What is clarity? How can we work toward creating less fog and more clarity in organizations? We'll talk about that, along with a bit of discussion about clarity in metrics, as I write about in my book Measures of Success.

Healthcare - Creating Value for Patient Creating value for patients isn't a "project".  Lean thinking isn't a program you "implement" in a hospital over a...

In the third and final part of this series, I share more about how Toyota teaches about TPS and TQM... and how they are sharing that approach with doctors and hospitals.

Joining me from Sweden for Episode 318 of the podcast is Marcus Hammarberg, author of the fascinating book Salvation: The Bungsu Story: How Lean and Kanban saved a small hospital in Indonesia. Twice. And can help you reshape work in your company. Marcus is a software developer, consultant, lean/agile coach, speaker, and author. He ended up with an opportunity to work with a hospital in Indonesia and he tells that compelling story in the book. How did a huge hole in the roof help trigger a change in culture and results? You'll hear about that and more in this episode. I hope you enjoy it and find it inspirational, as I did.

Healthcare - Creating Value for Patient The legendary quality leader W. Edwards Deming is widely known for his thoughts on statistics and systems.  However, Deming...

Last week, I wrote about the influence of Total Quality Management (TQM) on Toyota -- in the past and the present, in Japan and beyond. Today, to follow up on that, I'm going to share some excerpts from some material that was shared by a Toyota leader who presented at a hospital I visited earlier this year as part of the Kaizen Institute-organized Japan trip.

My guest for Episode #317 of the podcast is Patricia Morrill, a speaker, trainer, consultant, researcher, and author of the book The Perils of Un-Coordinated Healthcare: A Strategic Approach toward Eliminating Preventable Harm. With 30 years of experience in the healthcare industry, she has focused on blending operational efficiencies with healing environments. Patricia has successfully integrated Lean and Project Management methodologies with organizational strategic goals to build roadmaps for execution. Check out her website and her blog. In today's episode, we discuss her personal story about her mother's death that came as the result of a preventable medical error. What can be done to prevent medical errors, harm, and death?

Healthcare - Creating Value for Patient Canadian healthcare is where "pilot projects come to die".  There is a lack of a culture of innovation in Canadian...

Here's a blog post written by three physicians: Can the auto industry improve spinal fusion surgery? It's interesting that they so closely associate Lean with the auto industry when, at this point, Lean is used in virtually every industry and setting. That's why I used the word "Lean" in the title of my blog post here. They are also authors of a journal article titled "Application of Lean Principles to Neurosurgical Procedures: The Case of Lumbar Spinal Fusion Surgery, a Literature Review and Pilot Series," published in Operative Neurosurgery. In my post, I comment on their work...

Why do people fear change? Why are adults afraid of talking about their fears? My guest today is eminently qualified to answer such questions and to provide advice that can help us. My guest for Episode #315 is Robert Maurer, Ph.D., author of the outstanding book Mastering Fear. Bob was previously my guest for Episode #153, where we discussed one of his earlier books on Kaizen, One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way. By the way, earlier this year I noticed that his other book The Spirit of Kaizen was one of the few books by an American author that Toyota was selling at the Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology in Nagoya (see photo below). I hope you enjoy today's discussion on Mastering Fear. As the subtitle says, can we "harness emotion to achieve excellence in health, work, and relationships"?

Mark's Note: I asked my firiend Sam Selay to write a blog post on this topic after some private discussions that we had. He agreed and shared this post. I've talked to many others who have run into similar roadblocks and frustrations when trying, with the best of intentions, to bring their Lean skills and experience into healthcare. Sam was one of the contributing authors to the anthology "Practicing Lean," which is now available through Apple iBooks, in addition to Amazon (Kindle and paperback), and Leanpub (eBook and audiobook). Here is his post: In June, I was informed by my employer that the company had decided to go in a new direction. They said they would now build lean into their processes and enable process owners to be responsible for all continuous improvement functions. To date, I don’t know many organizations that have been able to successfully embed lean into everyone’s work and sustain it.