Using the improvement model popularized by the Toyota Production System, ThedaCare arrived at lean healthcare and three organizing principles – focus on patients, value, and time – that are built upon a foundation of continuous improvement and respect for people. See how they applied these principles to a large medical system with striking results.

Using the improvement model popularized by the Toyota Production System, ThedaCare arrived at lean healthcare and three organizing principles – focus on patients, value, and time – that are built upon a foundation of continuous improvement and respect for people. See how they applied these principles to a large medical system with striking results.

For the first time, Making Hospitals Work provides a practical road map for healthcare leaders seeking to create truly lean hospitals. It outlines a clear framework for focusing improvement activities on the most important challenges facing each hospital.

Follow the Learner presents a picture of how any organization can build a culture based on lean principles and tools. The books provides a glimpse into the transformation of a dental group from a batch-and-queue organization to one based on "one-patient flow."

Drawing on his years of working with hospitals, Mark Graban explains why and how lean can be used to improve safety, quality, and efficiency in a healthcare setting. A unique guide for healthcare professionals, this book clearly elaborates the steps they can take to begin the proactive process of lean implementation.

The fourth edition of the Lexicon, first published in January 2003, is 125 pages, containing 61 illustrations and 193 key terms from A3 Report to Yokoten. The Lexicon already covers such key lean enterprise terms as jidoka, kanban, kaizen, lean consumption, lean production, lean enterprise, pull production, standardized work, takt time, Toyota Production System, and value-stream mapping. It also has a simple, one-page guide to pronouncing Japanese terms.

Mistake-Proofing the Design of Health Care Processes is a synthesis of practical examples from the real world of health care on the use of process or design features to prevent medical errors or the negative impact of errors. It contains over 150 examples of mistake-proofing that can be applied in health care—and in many cases relatively inexpensively. Available for free from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

Beginning with an overview of how lean thinking developed and spread in manufacturing, this book quickly and—most importantly for healthcare readers who are not familiar with lean principles—clearly explains the key concepts of  lean thinking and how they apply to healthcare.Even better, Doing More with Less: Lean Thinking and Patient Safety in Healthcare offers specific examples throughout of how to translate the principles of lean thinking into the healthcare environment, and how leading hospitals are using the concepts to improve safety by eliminating the root causes of problems.

The remarkable story of how healthcare professionals found a powerful but unlikely cure for what ails hospitals and healthcare is clearly and invitingly told in The Nun and the Bureaucrat/Good News…How Hospitals Heal Themselves, a book and DVD set. 

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.