Lean Blog Audio

Three or four months ago, in the midst of a discussion on LinkedIn about patient safety, somebody made reference to a 1966 cover story from the magazine "Look." Look was a very popular competitor to "Life" and the "Saturday Evening Post," so this was written for a very general public audience. The cover tease reads: "OUR HOSPITALS ARE KILLING US An alarming report on conditions in many American cities"

Free Webinar Today on #Lean Collaboration Across Companies and Industries I hope you'll join me today for a KaiNexus webinar that I'm hosting. The topic is near and dear to my heart (as well as to others at KaiNexus): collaboration, learning, sharing. Effective Collaboration Across Organizations and Industries Our presenters will be Teresa Hay McMahon, the Executive Director of the Iowa Lean Consortium and one of the ILC members, Stephanie Hill, Corporate Continuous Improvement Manager at Kreg Tool Company. Kreg is, coincidentally, a KaiNexus customer. It's at 1 PM ET, but if you can't attend it live or didn't see this post in time, you will be sent a link to a recording if you register.

Texas Hospital Saves Money Occasionally With Lean Six Sigma... But Can Do More, More Often? I saw this headline the other day about University Medical Center in Lubbock, Texas: "UMC finds savings through waste"

This Organization Chose Not to "Deploy #Lean" Because a Leader Thought it is Not Customer Focused? I posted an article on LinkedIn last week as a companion article and summary of my podcast with Dean Gruner, MD, the recently retired CEO of ThedaCare. That article: "A Retired Hospital CEO Shares the Employee Feedback That was 'A Bucket of Cold Water to the Face.'" There have been over 125 comments so far... but one has me scratching my head. It read: "I looked at deploying Lean within our PNO, and ultimately decided against it, in part for two reasons: because Lean is about doing the same thing, albeit better and it is not as much customer/outwardly focused as we need in healthcare." Lean is not customer/outwardly focused? I hope this isn't a widespread perception or belief out there. I hope I'm overreacting to something that's not really a problem... but I wrote the post anyway.

I've long been appreciative of the work that Toyota does, through their non-profit TSSC subsidiary, to help non-profits and community organizations improve. The latest example of that is some work done at Children's Health in my other backyard, in Dallas: "Children's Health Joins Forces with Toyota to Improve Patient Safety and Quality of Care" As it says in the release: "Through a collaboration with Toyota, Children's HealthSM, the leading pediatric health system in North Texas, announced today it has successfully reduced rates of central line-associated blood stream infections (CLABSIs) by 75 percent with patients in the gastroenterology unit."

One challenge with teaching Lean is that there isn't aways a consistent definition that's used by everybody. Some of the definitions are really bad. Some of them are just different from others. Let's start with "different." Is a lack of standardization in definitions of Lean a problem?

I'm excited to announce that the audiobook version of our book Practicing Lean is complete! It's available for purchase via LeanPub.com and it might be available through other channels in the future. The audiobook is nearly seven hours of audio, which is the entire book, completely unabridged. As per the LeanPub.com approach, you can choose your own price. The suggested price is $24.97, but you can pay as little as $9.97 -- and you can pay as much as you want, considering ALL proceeds are being donated to the Louise H. Batz Patient Safety Foundation (about $2500 so far). Click here and choose the "Book + MP3 Audio Book" option, along with your price and you'll be able to download all of the MP3 files.

Let's start by stating the obvious: it sucks to wait 24 hours or more on a stretcher in an emergency department hallway waiting for a real hospital bed. It's sad and frustrating to have a couple of blog readers from Canada send me this story from Quebec: Quebec wants 24-hour cap for patients waiting on stretchers in ERs Barrette says there would be consequences for hospital staff, doctors who don't comply I think there's agreement that waiting 24 hours, 12 hours, or four hours for a bed after an admission is a problem. That's a problem worth working on.

This is an elaboration on something I originally posted on LinkedIn. I saw somebody touting an approach that would guarantee "maximum efficiency for your management gemba walks." Ah, the efficiency trap. Is efficiency really the goal here? Efficiency is usually defined as outputs divided by inputs. Visiting more departments more quickly would increase "efficiency." Shouldn't the goal there be "maximum effectiveness?"

Any rare event creates a number of challenges when it comes to manufacturing and supply chains. We're seeing a pretty historic "spike" in demand for products like the inexpensive glasses that allow one to safety view the eclipse (our friends in the totality zone can look at the totally-eclipsed sun safely, but that's the only time). You could call it "supply chain challenges" or a "lack of planning on my part," but I cannot find eclipse glasses anywhere. There are MANY articles online about this widespread problem -- it's been impossible to buy "eclipse glasses" anywhere. Why is this? What could have been done?