Mark Graban, Director of Communication & Technology for the Healthcare Value Leaders Network, talks with host Steve Wilson about the Network and how members engage and interact, particularly around the formal on-site "Gemba Visits" that are facilitated by the Network.Listen to the show: 

John Toussaint, MD, author of the book On the Mend: Revolutionizing Healthcare to Save Lives and Transform the Industry, was on "The Lean Nation" radio show with "Captain Karl" Wadensten talking about Lean Healthcare.

The link below contains an audio interview with John Toussaint, MD, co-author of the LEI book "On the Mend: Revolutionizing Healthcare to Save Lives and Transform the Industry."The first Q&A:Q I realize that it's a few months off yet, and you probably haven't finalized your remarks, but what are some of the challenges that you intend to address in your keynote speech in Baltimore? Some of the messages you're taking with you?A I think that this is about leadership behavior. The tools are the tools, the tools are important, you've got to learn the tools, but you can learn the tools. The hard part is the people part. What does a lean leader look like? That's what I'll be focussing on, what it takes to be an effective lean leader. It means, pretty much, that you have to change everything that you've learned in business school, or medical school, or nursing school, and you have to pretty much retool yourself, because our existing education system is turning out autocratic control freaks who manage by the numbers, and they don't know anything about quality improvement, and they don't know how to manage a group of people to actually achieve 100% reliable results. If we don't change ourselves as leaders, we will never be able to transform our companies.

In a podcast produced by Johns Hopkins, Dr. Erich Aldrich, Chair of the Quality Improvement Committee for Neurology discusses the importance of using Lean Sigma, a novel business approach, provided by The Center for Innovation in Quality Patient Care at Johns Hopkins Medicine. For the MP3 file, click the link below...

James Hereford, Executive Vice President, of Group Health was the featured guest on the February 13, 2010 edition of Paul Aker's "American Innovator" radio show from Washington State.In the show, James talks about the applicability to lean in healthcare, problem solving, and "respect for people" by not using lean to drive layoffs. Group Health has improved processes to be more patient focused and to engage staff members in continuous improvement.Group Health is a member of our Healthcare Value Leaders Network.

LEI Senior Fellow Mark Graban was a guest on The Lean Nation radio show with guest host Paul Carey.To listen:Download MP3 audio Streaming audio The Lean Nation is a show started and hosted by Karl Wadensten of VIBCO, a manufacturer in Rhode Island. His show airs daily at 4 PM eastern on AM 790 and via internet streaming radio.

In this podcast, Joe Dager of Business 901 interviews Dr. Sami Bahri, D.D.S., "The World's First Lean Dentist" and author of "Follow the Learner" from LEI. The 30-minute discussion is a nice overview of Dr. Bahri's lean journey and the transferrable lessons he has learned along he way.

Dr. Atul Gawande's new book, "The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right" has many conceptual ties to Lean. He was recently interviewed on NPR (text and audio available), where he talks about the benefits of checklists (a form of "standardized work" and also a form of "mistake proofing"). He also discusses the challenges of getting this powerful methodology to be more widely adopted.

Joan Wellman is interviewed by Mark Graban, Senior Fellow at the Lean Enterprise Institute, about her initial Lean Healthcare work that dates back to 1995 at a Seattle-area hospital. Use the streaming player below or click on "read more" for more listening options. 

This podcast, from Mark Graban's Lean Blog is with Dr. David Jaques, VP of Surgical Services at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, MO.Dr. Jaques talks about how he has led Lean efforts that involve physicians in a unique "6/3" format that helps solve tightly-scoped problems without the need to have surgeons and clinicians for a full 4-day kaizen event. We discuss how he got started with Lean, improvements that were made in the "Mass Transfusion Protocol," and their broader Lean and physician engagement efforts.Listen using the streaming player below, or click on "read more" for more listening options.

In this podcast, LEI Senior Fellow Mark Graban welcomes John Toussaint, MD, CEO emeritus of ThedaCare, and CEO of the ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value, to his Lean Blog podcast. In this discussion, Dr. Toussaint discusses "what's missing" in the Washington healthcare reform debate and shares how lean and other quality improvement efforts are the key to sustainable reform. Listen via this player or click on the link below:

In this Modern Healthcare podcast, Tom Wright, president and CEO, and Jim Kearns, CIO, of Delnor Community Hospital, Geneva, Illinois, discuss their first year of lean implementation via Rapid Process Improvement Workshops. Their initial goals were improving cost, quality, and patient satisfaction. In the first six months of "hospital wide" implementation, their investment of $650k (including staff time) led to a net revenue increase of $1.5M by increasing capacity and throughput and cut costs by over $1M. Their first efforts were in obstetrics, where, before lean, there wasn't enough capacity, patient satisfaction and staff morale were poor, and length of stay was too high. With lean, they are delivering more babies with fewer staff hours, the workplace is calmer, and morale has improved, the executives report.

The ASHP presents an audio webinar about Lean in pharmacy processes, presented by Carol Birk, M.S., R.Ph., Director of PharmaTAP, an engagement program of the Purdue University School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences and the Purdue Technical Assistance Program (TAP). The link below leads you to a briefing paper, webinar audio, and slides that were presented online.

Mark Graban welcomes John Toussaint, MD, CEO emeritus of ThedaCare, and CEO of the ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value, to his Lean Blog podcast. Dr. Toussaint, known for his leadership of the lean efforts at ThedaCare, done under the heading of the ThedaCare Improvement System, talks about ThedaCare's lean journey and how lean concepts can help what ails U.S. healthcare. Listen via this player or click the link below:  

The Lean Health Initiative that started in northwest Minnesota in 2004 is slowly spreading across the state. State officials said the effort uses uses some of the same concepts used at companies like Marvin Windows and Arctic Cat to streamline production. Since 2004 the state has awarded 15 grants to train 4,700 workers at 30 hospitals and clinics at a cost of $3.7 million. The medical facilities have contributed $8.3 million to training. State officials said the effort produces three benefits: workers remain at facilities, the quality of healthcare and patient satisfaction increases, long-term costs remain steady because there are fewer steps in processes. (Published by Minnesota Public Radio, Dec. 29, 2008.)

Are the calls for making the lean leap falling on deaf ears in the boardroom? Just slip this audio CD of the Lean Thinking onto the boss’s home stereo to get the message across subliminally. Then get out of the way when the boss comes to work and rushes onto the shop floor to lead kaizen workshops.