Tag: Virginia Mason

Dr. Gary Kaplan is the CEO of Seattle's Virginia Mason Medical Center, considered one of the world leaders in the adoption of Lean healthcare...

Alternate title: “Lean is an Integrated System. Of Course Just Implementing Pieces Leads to Failure.” Throughout the 10 years that I’ve been involved with Lean healthcare efforts, I’ve heard multiple stories of organizations that ended their formal Lean initiatives. They do so, as I’ve been told, because they need to cut costs...

Later today and tomorrow, I'll be attending the annual World Patient Safety, Science & Technology Summit that's produced by a non-profit called the Patient...

I've gone to Japan twice now with Kaizen Institute to study Lean with healthcare professionals from around the world. I first went in 2012,...

Before I head out on vacation, here is a reader question that I am sharing for your input.I'm sharing this with permission and I'm...

Today's post is a throwback to an essay that I originally wrote for the excellent book Lean-Led Hospital Design: Creating the Efficient Hospital of the...

My guest for episode #221 is Jacob Stoller, author of a book that was just released: The Lean CEO: Leading the Way to World-Class Excellence. It's...

When we introduce the idea of Lean to healthcare organizations, it's very common for somebody (often a senior physician) to say something like, "But we...

Last week, I wrote a post (part 1) looking back at our visit to the Toyota Tsutsumi factory that was part of our Japan tour that took...

Note: Today is the fifth anniversary of the Haiti earthquake. Russell Maroni's journal from his volunteer work there, including some Lean concepts he employed,...

I travel a lot and, thanks to my work, I'm pretty well attuned to the idea of not blaming individuals for systemic problems in...

The ideas, principles, and methods that we'd recognize as "Lean" aren't exclusively of Japanese origin. Many of us, myself included, draw inspiration from Toyota,...