Lean Healthcare

CASE STUDY – Thanks to a commitment to Lean Thinking and a solid coaching system, this hospital in China has been able to initiate a remarkable transformation.

INTERVIEW – We are used to thinking of A3s mainly as a tool for problem solving. In this Q&A, you will learn about the experience of a San Francisco hospital using it for personal development.

FEATURE - This surgery department was among the first areas in this hospital (maybe in the whole of Spain) to adopt Lean Thinking. Here's what their lean journey is focusing on more than 10 years after they started.

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FEATURE – Freeing up beds is an age-old problem for hospitals. The medical area of this Catalan hospital group has found in lean a creative way to solve it.

INTERVIEW – Cleveland Clinic has been on a lean journey for a few years now. In this interview, their Chief Improvement Officer and Chief Nursing Officer talk continuous improvement, metrics, and sustaining results.

FEATURE – The ER of this Catalan hospital is finding great value in the application of Lean Thinking, which has already led to a dramatic change in its processes and to better care for patients.

CASE STUDY – The Hospital de Bellvitge in Barcelona is relying heavily on hoshin and Kata to create a working environment based on collaboration and joint problem solving.

WEB SERIES – In Episode 2 of our docuseries on lean in Brazil, we learn how the pioneering efforts of a cancer clinic have inspired the city of São José dos Campos to transform into a lean healthcare cluster.

WEB SERIES – Today, we launch a new documentary series on lean around the world, with the first season focusing on lean in Brazil. In the first episode, we visit the lean clinic on a mission to reduce the burden on cancer in our lives.

FEATURE – PL readers will likely be familiar with IOV, the cancer clinic in Brazil that’s become a reference for lean healthcare for countless organizations. Here, Dr Fred looks back at IOV’s 15-year journey.

FEATURE – This nurses-led experiment in Barcelona’s Hospital Clinic is proving successful in getting more patients discharged on time and avoiding surgery cancellations.

FEATURE – Thanks to lean, a primary care unit in Catalonia has streamlined its blood sampling process, improving the patient experience and the life at work for its staff.

CASE STUDY – The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the application of Virtual Healthcare across the world. In South Australia, this has been implemented in urgent care.

CASE STUDY – How do you give hundreds of primary care units the tools and knowledge they need to make improvements? The Catalan Health Service found the solution in hoshin kanri.

FEATURE – To facilitate the transition to a new organization of the work in their department, a group of nurses at Erasmus Medical Center have been using Training Within Industry.

FEATURE – Our editor recently caught up with the director of the largest hospital in the Netherlands and asked him about the lean transformation he’s leading there.

FEATURE – In this article, we hear about how the lean successes of one hospital inspired an entire healthcare authority to introduce changes to their processes.

CASE STUDY – This primary care unit in Brazil is hoping to become a model for other units in their system. Take note, this is how Lean Thinking can spread across healthcare systems.

CASE STUDY – This project in Brazil, part of a city-wide effort to improve patient flows, led to impressive results in the waiting time to access cancer care.

FEATURE – How Lærdal Medical was able to enthusiastically restart its lean journey with help of a good old-fashioned Kaizen Week.

INTERVIEW – With the Lean Global Connection just two weeks away, we learn more about the lean healthcare content available to attendees.

FEATURE – A Brazilian hospital has used lean healthcare principles to optimize the chemotherapy process and prevent patients from unnecessarily wasting hours before their treatment.

CASE STUDY – Clinical trials are known for their rigorous analysis and approval process. The experience of Roche Brasil teaches us what lean and agile thinking can do to speed it up.

FEATURE – As Italy rolls out its vaccination campaign, the author reflects on what he recently observed at a vaccination hub in the Veneto region and discusses how the process could be made leaner.

FEATURE – This story will take you through the development of the most important A3 of Mr Joe’s life – the one meant to turn around his health and help him to live longer.

FEATURE – Lean healthcare is new to China. The authors share some examples of improvements projects taking place in Chinese hospitals, which they hope will inspire more organizations to take lean on.

FEATURE – In his first gemba walk in months, the author observes the Covid-19 vaccination process in a physician’s practice in Wales and reflects on how lean it is.

CASE STUDY – This hospital in Argentina has leveraged the power of Lean Thinking to greatly enhance patient care, even in the pandemic, and receive internationally renowned accreditations.

FEATURE – As South Africa fights a second Covid-19 wave, the CEO of a hospital group shares some of the lessons learnt so far and how Lean Thinking is helping the organization resist.

FEATURE – In March 2019, this hospital partnered with the Lean Global Network on a two-day Jishuken event. Nearly two years later, the authors reflect on the legacy of that initiative.

CASE STUDY – Pall Corporation used lean product and process development principles to create the process to produce billions of doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine for Covid-19 in record time.

FEATURE - This story from a Chinese children's hospital reminds us that the lean healthcare improvements we make can have remarkable results on both patients and staff.

FEATURE – This story of a lean application in elderly care in a Norwegian borough demonstrates the great strides that can be made in providing better service to citizens if their needs become the focus of the work.

CASE STUDY – This Barcelona hospital began its journey with ambitious projects and is starting to see the fruits of its labor, with the pandemic acting as an unexpected but powerful catalyst for change.

WEBINAR - The Lean Healthcare Initiative teams presents the results of their research and provide five guidelines to successfully transform healthcare organizations.

FEATURE – When the number of Covid-19 cases skyrocketed in the Italian region of Piedmont, this microbiology lab had to find a way to increase its capacity to process swab tests. Here’s how they did it.

NOTES FROM THE (VIRTUAL) GEMBA – In the last of her series of virtual gemba walks, the author learns how a hospital in the Caribbean island of Martinique relied on Lean Thinking in its fight against the Coronavirus.

WEBINAR – Last month, the Lean Management Instituut in Holland organized a webinar to discuss the response of lean healthcare organizations to the Coronavirus. Today we are repurposing for you all.

FEATURE – How did lean healthcare organizations respond to the most critical stage of the epidemic? We asked three hospitals in Catalonia and Toledo to share their experience.

FEATURE - A Lean Global Network team of lean practitioners and coaches shares a set of lean healthcare tips hospitals can apply today to ready themselves for the peak of Covid-19 cases.

FEATURE – Our coverage of the Covid-19 emergency continues with an article discussing how lean healthcare principles can support and protect the professionals at the front line of this war.

FEATURE – Only when we go where the action is, do we begin to truly understand the work. Rose Heathcote joins the Emergency Medical Services in Cape Town for a day.

INTERVIEW – A private healthcare group in South Africa has carefully studied the unique challenges it faces and customized its approach to improvement accordingly, embarking on a lean journey to better patient care.

CASE STUDY – Effectively deploying and executing your strategy requires mastering quick follow-ups at different levels of the organization – in other words, Daily Management.

CASE STUDY – Catalonia’s largest hospital is undergoing a successful transformation – supported by pioneering hoshin experiments – that has already turned it into a poster child for lean healthcare in the region.

OPINION – The team at Instituto Lean Management in Barcelona comments on recent news from the Catalan healthcare sector and reflects on lean sustainability.

CASE STUDY – The CEO of a hospital in Johannesburg looks back to the last five years to reflect on a lean healthcare transformation that is creating positive outcomes for patients.

CASE STUDY – Starting with a series of pilot sites, the NHS is hoping to engage the Kata coaching approach to really spread an improvement culture to staff and patients.

FEATURE – The renovation of one of its departments gave a hospital in Italy the perfect opportunity to redesign his oncology care with lean healthcare principles in mind.

FEATURE – A student in a medical school recently completed a rotation based on A3 thinking. She tells us what learning to use this problem-solving method has brought her.

FEATURE – Problem solving is a fundamental part of being a leader, which is what led this medical school in the United States to include A3 thinking in its curriculum.

FEATURE – A dedicated pathway and the introduction of lean healthcare principles is bringing people together to provide better care to older, frail people in an Irish hospital group.

FEATURE – In a bid to find inspiration and new ideas to achieve excellent outcomes in patient safety, a group from a Boston hospital flew to Orlando to visit JetBlue Airways.

FEATURE – Lean thinking has helped this dental practice in Italy to streamline the work, develop the capabilities of workers and free up a lot of the head dentist’s time.

INTERVIEW – This cardiac laboratory in Singapore was targeting one improvement and ended up with something different, but equally impactful for its patient flow.

FEATURE – Hospitals are often part of larger healthcare systems, which makes it critical to learn how to bring lean to such diverse and complex environments. We hear from a large hospital group in Ireland.

PROFILE – Earlier this month, our editor visited the US and sat down with the CEO of a community health center near Boston. His humility and honesty about his lean leadership are striking.

INTERVIEW - Grey Dube reflects on the approach, challenges and successes of becoming a lean CEO, and on how this helped turn Leratong Hospital into a lean organization.

FEATURE – How “Double-Loop PDCA” was discovered due to a problem with implementing a lean daily management system in a South African hospital.

FEATURE – The power of cross-pollination: learning from a manufacturing company has helped a cancer treatment center in Brazil to thrive in its lean transformation.

INTERVIEW – The CEO of a Scottish health board takes us through the organization’s long lean journey, reminding us that allowing people to take the initiative often leads to the most impressive discoveries.

INTERVIEW – The inspirational CEO of a community health center in Massachusetts discusses leadership transition, the role of lean facilitators and front-line engagement.

INTERVIEW – Bringing nurses together and giving them a space to discuss problems on a regular basis has allowed this hospital in Holland to successfully embrace lean thinking and reap its benefits.

FEATURE – By bringing organizations together to regularly share updates on their lean journeys, Instituto Lean Management has managed to create a flourishing lean healthcare community in Catalunya. But hospitals aren't the only ones benefitting.

INTERVIEW – By making lean its way of thinking and acting, a hospital in Porto Alegre, Brazil was able to dramatically improve patient flow and transform its culture.

INTERVIEW – A cardiologist from a hospital in Salvador de Bahia explains how his department was completely transformed following the introduction of a dedicated pathway for heart patients.

FEATURE – After Singapore Institute of Technology staff was introduced to lean thinking, a course was launched to provide healthcare workers with the lean skills they need to transform their organizations.

INTERVIEW - What happens in an organization after a move from silos to value streams? In this video, a Value Stream Manager from a Brazilian cancer treatment center shares her experience.

VIDEO - The CEO of a cancer center in Brazil gives us a tour of the their obeya room, taking us through their strategy deployment and explaining how it supports their mission of reducing the burden of cancer.

INTERVIEW – The Consorci Sanitari del Garraf, a Catalan hospital PL has come to know well over the past few years, just won an Honorable Mention award at the World Hospital Congress.

VIDEO GEMBA WALK - Last week PL went to Brazil. We joined a doctor at the gemba in one of the hospitals we visited and asked her to show us their visual management system in the ER.

VIDEO INTERVIEW – Last year, the Lean Global Network launched an initiative to leverage the knowledge of our institutes to positively impact the healthcare industry. We caught up with the group in São Paulo this week.

FEATURE – Long waiting times are bad for both patients and hospitals, but when we talk about heart attacks reducing them becomes a moral imperative. Here’s how Hospital Aliança in Brazil is doing it.

FEATURE – At Malamulele Onward in Johannesburg, a do-it-yourself lean transformation is increasing the impact the nonprofit organization is having on South African children living with cerebral palsy.

FEATURE – The importance of leveraging early successes to drive engagement to lean is often talked about. The story of this Brazilian hospital confirms this is the way to go.

FEATURE – We can't go wrong when we trust our people to take the initiative that we will improve their work... that's how Siena University Hospital cut its procurement lead-time in Surgery by two-thirds.

PROFILE – Another month, another inspiring profile of a lean practitioner. We were impressed by Dr Billi’s deep conviction in the idea that, first of all, leaders must be learners. You will be too.

FEATURE – Having dedicated clinical paths for specific types of patients is a well-known method for reducing waiting times. By doing it, Siena University Hospital managed to slash delays by 80%.

FEATURE – This article shares the lean journeys of four North American hospitals, and their learning's, reminding us that being part of a network of likeminded practitioners is critical to our success.

FEATURE – Another month, another story of a lean project told by the Siena hospital front-line folks. This time we take you to the Intensive Care Nursery, whose layout was transformed to provide better care to premature newborns.

FEATURE – In the second article of our series written by the front-line staff of Siena University Hospital, we learn how the lean principles of pull and flow have transformed the blood donating process.

FEATURE – Every year, Siena University Hospital runs a Lean Day to celebrate and award its best lean projects. In this new series, front-line people write about five of these initiatives: first up, Internal Medicine.

NOTES FROM THE GEMBA – On this gemba walk in the cardiology department of a Parisian hospital, the author discovers how the team is changing its internal dynamics and processes to make lean their way of thinking.

FEATURE – A Michigan NGO that facilitates organ and tissue donation shares its experience with value stream mapping, reflecting on people coming together to understand the gap between current and future state.

FEATURE – The Palo Alto Medical Foundation has used lean to redesign workflows in its primary care clinics since late 2011. With changes now spread to a total of 17 facilities, the team started to analyze what it took to sustain the results achieved.

CASE STUDY – There is more to Siena than the Palio: the Tuscan city boasts of one of the most advanced examples of lean healthcare in Italy. We asked the team at the University Hospital how they are doing it.

FEATURE – The warehousing department of a Dutch hospital has been implementing lean for a few years. Its Head of Logistics believes in an approach to change based on respect for people and on making small but steady steps.

FEATURE – By using lean management, the Hospital São Francisco (HSF) near São Paulo, Brazil, has improved its ability to deal with dengue epidemics – treating patients more quickly and efficiently.

CASE STUDY – The whole of Helsinki’s hospital district is leaning out, with incredible results. It isn’t every day that we come across – let alone have the opportunity to observe – a lean transformation in such a large healthcare organization.

PROFILE – Lean is spreading like wildfire across the Catalonian healthcare sector, following a do-it-yourself model unique to this part of the world. Our editor met one of the practitioners who are making it happen.

PROFILE – This month we meet another member of the lean community, a true pioneer of lean thinking, who contributed to introducing the methodology in Australian cities and healthcare organizations.

CASE STUDY – How an improvement program of the British national healthcare system inspired a Belgian hospital to launch an organization-wide lean transformation with the active support of the HR and nursing departments.

PROFILE – While pioneering the application of lean thinking in healthcare, Alice Lee realized that you should always approach teaching as you do problem solving: scientifically, situationally, and with the humility of a learner.

FEATURE - What if it were your staff driving change rather than managers? A focus on improvement at the front line and on people development proved critical to the lean transformation of a Stanford hospital.

PROFILE – It isn’t every day that you come across a hospital CEO coaching people on A3s and following his own standard work. So when you do, it’s important to share their story. This month we profile the CEO of a Brazilian cancer treatment center.

FEATURE – Moving her assistant's workstation next to hers and introducing standardized work helped a family physician in California to provide better, faster care to her patients and to avoid burnout.

INTERVIEW – At the recent Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit in Brussels, Planet Lean editor Roberto Priolo sat down with John Toussaint to discuss the state of lean thinking in healthcare, its challenges and its opportunities.

PROFILE – In this new section, Planet Lean features some of the most inspirational lean leaders out there. For the first profile, we have selected James Hereford, a former high school teacher who is now leading his third healthcare transformation.

FEATURE ARTICLE – By adopting lean thinking and establishing a dedicated care pathway, a Brazilian hospital has been able to drastically reduce the time breast cancer patients have to wait to undergo surgery or start treatment.

INTERVIEW – At the recent European Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit, we sat down with Helen Zak for a few minutes to discuss the state of change in the healthcare sector.