Basicmedical Key

With all the hoopla about healthcare reform, there’s one huge missing piece—healthcare is going to have to get dramatically faster, better, and cheaper to help pay for the changes. Each…

While Lean doesn’t require many tools other than a pad of Post-it Notes, Six Sigma thrives on charts, graphs, and diagrams of performance data. At the Institute for Healthcare Improvement…

Using simple charts, I’ve helped teams save millions of dollars and often in just a few days. The concept is over 100 years old. It’s referenced often in every management…

Medical educators must begin teaching tomorrow’s doctors to become much better at creating, improving, and managing processes and systems. —CLAYTON M. CHRISTENSEN The agonizingly slow flow of patients through a…

Some tools of Lean Six Sigma aren’t graphical; they’re simply analytical. Sometimes you want to be able to compare two processes or products and learn something about their quality using…

The Institute of Medicine’s To Err Is Human (National Academy Press, 2000) called for a 50 percent reduction in medication errors, but in 2009, Dr. David Bates said, “With respect…

So far we’ve looked at ways to solve problems with delay, defects, and deviation using the methods and tools of Lean Six Sigma. After Lean Six Sigma teams have sunk…

Lean Six Sigma professionals often talk about picking the “low-hanging fruit,” but what if the low-hanging fruit is invisible. I’ve noticed that one of the biggest challenges improvement professionals face…

Managing performance improvements in a hospital full of patients can seem daunting, but it’s a skill that can be learned. You will make mistakes, but the secret is to learn…

It should come as no surprise that a faster, better hospital will be cheaper to operate and more profitable. When you’re not dealing with all the delays in the emergency…