Lean Healthcare

114 Articles

What Can Lean Do for the Healthcare Business Office?

By Jon Miller - August 6th, 2009

Daisy asked, What can lean do for the Healthcare business office? The billers, the insurance follow up staff? Lean can do a great things for the healthcare business office. I have asked Chris Schrandt to answer this one. Chris has been

Value added percentage

Value Added Percentage Question

By Jon Miller - July 16th, 2009

Yesterday I came across an example of a value stream whose numbers left me puzzled. The value-added percentage was greater than 100. This seemed impossible at first but I now understand how it can happen. The process, the numbers, and

Review of Follow the Learner by Dr. Sami Bahri, DDS

By Jon Miller - June 10th, 2009

Follow the Learner: The Role of a Leader in Creating a Lean Culture by Dr. Sami Bahri, DDS is the best book on the subject of leadership and lean I have read in a long time. Written as a very personal account of the development of teh

Visual Management Resource for Lean Hospitals

By Jon Miller - April 13th, 2009

Here is another recent find on visual management: the website of MediFilm “the leaders in healthcare visual management systems”. Who knew there was such a thing to be leaders of? Well done in any case, making a product out

Part 3 of Q&A with Mark Graban, Author of Lean Hospitals

By Jon Miller - October 8th, 2008

We would like to express our gratitude to Mark Graban for taking the time to provide in-depth answers to questions regarding his experience in lean healthcare as well as expounding on ideas and examples from his book Lean Hospitals. Th

Part 2 of Q&A with Mark Graban, Author of Lean Hospitals

By Jon Miller - October 8th, 2008

We continue our question and answer session on the topic of lean healthcare with Mark Graban, author of Lean Hospitals: Q9: You wrote in Lean Hospitals that it takes courage to point out that something is a waste. How have you been abl

Part 1 of Q&A with Mark Graban, Author of Lean Hospitals

By Jon Miller - October 6th, 2008

This is the first part of our question & answer session with Mark Graban, author of Lean Hospitals. Mark has been kind enough to take the time to give us thoughtful and in-depth answers. Here is the first installment of 8, with 12

Improving Healthcare Delivery by Studying Toyota

By Jon Miller - March 17th, 2008

The Seattle Post Intelligencer has a good article giving an update on the lean journey at Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle, titled To build a better hospital, Virginia Mason takes lessons from Toyota plants When you think of a

101 Kaizen Templates: The Checklist

By Jon Miller - January 6th, 2008

This is the first post in the 101 kaizen templates series. Only 100 more kaizen templates to go. Takt time is 3.5 days per template. I considered planning out and structuring this series but for now we’ll just go with the flow an

Free Videos on Lean Healthcare, Toyota Production System

By Jon Miller - November 5th, 2007

Here are a pair of free videos on YouTube. The first is titled A Quick Introduction to Lean Thinking and it is brought to you by the NHS group Institute for Innovation and Improvement. Some of the graphics and examples of Lean in healt

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