Lean Blog Audio

As is often the case, I have too many open browser tabs full of articles that I was going to potentially blog about. This slows down my Mac (thanks, Chrome!).So, it's time for me to clear out my backlog and a little mental overhead... to share some articles I've been reading with some quick notes, instead of doing full blog posts. Well, I'll get my backlog down a little. Why Giant Hospital Systems Might Be Getting it Wrong Resiliency Training - Important but Not Nearly Enough 'Lean Six Sigma' comes to the VA; Collins cheers Rotarians tour hospital to see improvement model

I'm always happy to see success stories where healthcare organizations solve problems that matter through Lean concepts, practices, and principles. Today, I'm blogging about two articles I saw about this recently.One of the problems that needs to be solved in healthcare is long waiting times, whether that means waiting for care in the emergency department, waiting for an appointment, or waiting for test results. http://leanblog.org/audio140

http://leanblog.org/audio139 In the previous editions of my book Lean Hospitals, I've included case examples from Avera McKennan Hospital and Avera Health. Fred Slunecka is the former president of Avera McKennan and he is now chief operating officer for the Avera system.I talked with Fred again for the updated and revised third edition (available for pre-order now, shipping in June), with my highlights added for this post: Reflecting further in 2015, Slunecka says:

After the previous CEO of JC Penney, Ron Johnson, was fired (see my post "Lack of PDSA made JCP CEO SOL?"), it seems that new CEO Marvin Ellison might be taking a different approach.See this article from FORTUNE: "The CEO Who's Reinventing J.C. Penney."

The revised, updated, and expanded third edition of my book Lean Hospitals has been sent to the printer and copies should start shipping by mid June.I'm happy to now be offering a free PDF of the revised first chapter.

recently saw some updates and new details related to some topics I've covered here on the blog, so I'm combining them into this batch update.In this post, we cover everything from a hospital NICU, to baseball, to healthcare waiting times and a scandal there that won't die.

As I guy who started his career in manufacturing before moving to healthcare in 2005, I don't get many opportunities to visit the "gemba" at a factory very often anymore. I get to occasionally visit a Toyota plant (in the U.S. or Japan). As I'm getting settled back into the Dallas / Fort Worth (DFW) area, I'm reconnecting with some of the people I know through our local "Lean DFW" network.foremanOne of those Lean DFW people is Rick Foreman, the VP of Lean Development at Federal Heath Sign Co. Federal Heath makes big signs for gas stations, restaurants, hotels, hospitals, and the like. There's metal being cut and bent, stuff being painted, structures being built, and lights being installed and assembled. Rick, pictured at left, is more of a khakis-and-polo-shirt guy (as he was dressed on Friday). Suits and ties exist daily in hospitals, but exist mostly in LinkedIn profile photos in manufacturing :-) We had the chance to meet for a few hours on Friday morning to catch up andtalk about their Lean approach at Federal Health, across their different sites. Rick and the folks at Federal Heath have a very strong focus on developing people. As Rick says, "Doing Lean with people, instead of doing it TO them." They have mentoring and development programs tied to Lean, with leaders at different levels learning from each other in different ways. Their President / CEO is the chief advocate for Lean as a business strategy.

I love stories of humility and customer focus in healthcare. Let me share two such stories with you today. Oh, and, I ended up sharing a story of mine that's related and might just recount a few screw ups on my part... but I think I eventually did the right thing.

Today's post is an addendum from Saturday's post on the apparent death of a health system Lean program: "Why Would a New Healthcare CEO Kill a Lean Program?"If you read that post, there's an interesting comment from a Presence Health employee that doesn't shed too much more light on this: "From the standpoint of a current Presence Health Employee~ my opinion is that the RIEs failed because they were aggressively site specific. At a time when PresenceHealth is "Becoming One" I do not believe the RIEs took the entire ministry into consideration when planning events. Decisions and "experiments" where being made and conducted through a site specific lens, and this was often in contradiction to the spirit of the new organization." As I commented in response, I'm not sure why a goal of common processes or a health system that's actually a system would be a reason to stop with Lean. Unless hopefully they are really just re-booting the effort instead of killing it altogether. As I alluded to in the post Saturday, there was a sad story about ahospital that I featured in the 2008 1st edition of Lean Hospitals that basically killed their promising program when a new CEO was hired from the outside. As Adam Zak, one of the top Lean-focused executive recruiters said, it's a shame that the board (apparently) didn't hire a CEO with Lean experience.

Apparently, the Lean journey at Presence, regardless of what form it was taking in late 2015, has not survived a CEO transition at Presence Health. A new CEO, Michael Englehart, took over about six months ago (just after that Modern Healthcare story was published).Here is the latest Modern Healthcare piece by Sabriya Rice: “Presence Health rethinks its Lean initiative”