Networking with Bison and Doctors
Lean Leap to Health Care #3 (click for Part #2) by Scott McDuffee It would seem to be an efficient method to move into Health Care to PUSH my resume to as many potential employers as possible – thus increasing…
Tag Quality
Quality: Leadership, Systems Thinking, and Continuous Improvement
Quality doesn’t come from inspection, pressure, or choosing between speed and accuracy. It comes from well-designed systems, capable processes, and leaders who focus on learning instead of blame. This archive brings together blog posts, podcasts, and reflections on quality through a Lean and Deming lens—covering psychological safety, metrics, variation, leadership behavior, healthcare quality, and why sustainable improvement depends on fixing systems rather than managing people harder.
Standardized Work Should Not be Robotic – Especially in Healthcare
Why ‘Quality’ Care Is Dangerous – WSJ.com Yesterday’s WSJ opinion piece by Dr. Jerome Goopman (author of How Doctors Think) and Pamela Hartzband caught my eye. Thanks to the four or five of you who also emailed me the link…
Following up on the Peanut Corporation… Snap, Crackle, Salmonella?
Following up on these two earlier posts (here and here)… I’ll quit calling them the “Idiot Corporation of America” since the Peanut Corporation of America is bankrupt and shutting down. I feel bad for those who are losing jobs due…
Better Healthcare Quality Won’t Cost Less This Way
Device Alerts Doctors To Items Left Behind After Surgery – Indiana News Story – WRTV Indianapolis Healthcare is often stuck in the mindset that’s considered outdated in lean manufacturing settings — the old idea that better quality must inherently cost…
Dennis Quaid and a Discussion of Medical Mistakes Coming Up on ‘Oprah’ Tuesday
Dennis Quaid Takes Oprah To Hospital That OD’d His Babies This might be the first time I’m DVR-ing the Oprah show. Tomorrow, actor Dennis Quaid will talk about the medical errors that nearly killed his twin babies. For the first…
Idiot Inspector for Idiot Corporation?
TheDay.com – Food safety problems slip by auditors You might remember my rants about the Idiot Corp… I mean Peanut Corporation of America. Just saw now in the news that they had an “inspection” that, upon closer inspection, is either…
Idiot Corporation of America?
Ga. peanut plant has history of problems – Food safety – nbc.com NY Times article There was a lot of focus in the news yesterday about this peanut contamination being an “FDA problem”, with President Obama pointing at a lack…
Relying on Memory Leads to Rework
Biden Takes Shot at Roberts for Flubbing Presidential Oath – First 100 Days of Presidency – Politics FOXNews.com On Tuesday, Chief Justice John Roberts appeared to flub his giving of the presidential oath of office, leaving out the word “faithfully”…
Why Do Hospitals Have to Rely on Vigilant Patients and Families?
Bedside Manner: Advocating for a Relative in the Hospital (WSJ) WSJ Health Blog (free): Five Tips for Helping a Family Member in the Hospital I’ve written before about my questions of why so many hospitals abdicate their leadership responsibility for…
Words that Matter in Healthcare
Healthcare Intelligence Network » Blog Archive » Eight Steps to a Culture of Safety I think words matter. Action matters, also, but the words we use do matter (not that I always choose them well here). Hospitals often use different…
"If you didn’t do it in Six Sigma, then it didn’t happen."
Guest Columnist – Quality Digest Wow, this is pretty bad… allegedly about GE. Granted, any dysfunctional Lean company could end up with similar dynamics. So none of this is knock on Six Sigma… it’s about human nature and organizational dynamics.…
Book Review: The Ice Cream Maker
The Ice Cream Maker: An Inspiring Tale About Making Quality The Key Ingredient in Everything You Do I was reading the WSJ a while back and was intrigued by a book recommendation by Chrysler’s Robert Nardelli (you can read that…
