In a new blog post for Health Affairs, the Center’s John Toussaint, MD, joins CMS’ Patrick Conway, MD, and Center Board Member Stephen Shortell of the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, to address claims made in the recent New England Journal of Medicine article, “Medical Taylorism,” that the Toyota Production System and lean healthcare […]
A hospital’s staff discovers improving efficiency isn’t easy by Sabriya Rice CHICAGO ON A WEDNESDAY MORNING early last month, a dozen nurses, housekeepers, surgical technicians and surgical assistants at Presence Health’s Sts. Mary and Elizabeth Medical Center are running behind in their hunt for ways to save time on the hospital’s busy surgical floor. […]
By Patricia Gabow and Patrick H. Conway August 13, 2015 Many approaches to improving value in our health system focus on specific issues involving care delivery models such as optimizing primary care, coordinating care transitions, facilitating the care of the high need/high use patients, or reducing unnecessary readmissions. While improvement in specific areas will yield benefits […]
Longtime friend of the Center, Dr. Jack Billi (University of Michigan Health System), has taken the time to show us how improvement work can be easy and straightforward. In this short six-minute video, he demonstrates how he achieved 100% compliance with hand washing–an important process for all healthcare professionals. Using the scientific method, he hypothesized, trialed, […]
Beyond Heroes: A Lean Management System for Healthcare, the most recent book from the ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value, has earned the prestigious Shingo Research and Professional Publication Award. The award is given annually by The Shingo Institute, a not-for-profit organization that is part of Utah State University. The award recognizes the book’s contribution to […]
Reducing patient suffering — the kind caused not by disease but by medical care itself — has become a medical goal. The effort is driven partly by competition and partly by a realization that suffering, whether from long waits, inadequate explanations or feeling lost in the shuffle, is a real and pressing issue. It is […]
Article in Today’s Hospitalist written by David A. Frenz, MD, a hospitalist for HealthEast Care System in St. Paul, Minn., and is board certified in both family and addiction medicine. AMERICANS—both individually and as a nation— spend a boatload on health care. A study in the January 2013 issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine pegged annual health […]
In Innovation and Best Practices in Health Care Scheduling, CEOs with experience leading change in five of the nation’s prominent health systems-Denver Health, Geisinger Health System, Kaiser Permanente, ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value, and Seattle Children’s Hospital-describe how they tackled the complex issues surrounding wait times throughout the continuum of care. They review the important forces […]
Can a production system developed to make better, safer cars also make better, safer healthcare? A growing number of hospitals in Canada seem to think so — that’s why they have adopted the “Lean” production system. The province of Saskatchewan is so convinced, it’s bringing in ‘lean’ province-wide. Also known as”The Toyota Way” — the […]
Before ThedaCare initiated Collaborative Care at its two urban hospitals, nursing staff sometimes felt they spent more time tracking down supplies and information rather than directly caring for patients. To change that, ThedaCare utilized its lean management tools to completely redesign its hospital patient rooms and how they deliver care to patients. The result is […]
