Lean Thinking for Emerging Healthcare Leaders: How to Develop Yourself and Implement Process Improvements aims to solve the issues in modern day healthcare by handing over the reins of the improvement process to healthcare professionals. Putting those who are doing the work and are closest to the actual situation in the lead. The purpose of this book is to help you understand how to develop yourself and your leadership in such a way that will best benefit your team and your patients. This includes change management practices that will help to build commitment with your team members, colleagues, management, patients, and other stakeholders. This book educates you, as a leading medical professional, in the principles and values of Lean leadership and management. It will teach you how to improve healthcare from the inside, making it safer, better, faster, more accessible, and more affordable. With this book we want to inspire, motivate, and stimulate you to lead continuous improvement—while being respectful to people—on your way to ideal care for every patient. The primary target audience for the book are medical professionals who have (recently) acquired leadership, management, or business responsibilities. The book will also be of high value to those who obtained temporary leadership positions, like project leaders, problem solvers, change managers, and innovators. Because most of the teachings in the book are meta skills and ways of thinking, the book is easily relatable and transferable to other disciplines and even sectors.

Healthcare organizations that have already applied Lean thinking to their processes, with the diligence of effective management and strong leadership support, are now realizing the benefits of their efforts. And, many of those benefits surpass what was thought possible just a few years ago. To be successful, these organizations had to provide the l

Hospitals have long relied on the heroics of one brilliant nurse or doctor to save the day. Such heroics often result in temporary workarounds and quick fixes that leave not only patients and quality care at risk, but also increase costs. This is the story of an organization breaking that habit. Like a growing number of healthcare organizations around the world, ThedaCare, Inc. has been using lean thinking and the principles of the Toyota Production System to improve quality of care, reduce waste, and become more reliable. But lean thinking was incompatible with ThedaCare’s old top-down, hero-based system of management. Kim Barnas, former SVP of ThedaCare, shows us how she and her team created a management system that is stable and lean, to spur continuous improvement. Beyond Heroes shows the reader, step by step, how ThedaCare teams developed the system, using the stories of its doctors, nurses and administrators to illustrate. The book explores each of the eight essential components of the lean system, from front-line problem solving with the scientific method to daily team huddles and creating standard work for leaders all the way to the top of an organization. Finally, the author introduces four executives from healthcare systems across North America who have implemented ThedaCare’s system and share the lessons they learned along the way. Beyond Heroes is not just a call to action or an argument for a better healthcare system. It is a necessary roadmap through the rocky terrain ahead, one that healthcare leaders can customize to their special needs.

Organizations around the world are using Lean to redesign care and improve processes in a way that achieves and sustains meaningful results for patients, staff, physicians, and health systems. Lean Hospitals, Third Edition explains how to use the Lean methodology and mindsets to improve safety, quality, access, and morale while reducing costs, increasing capacity, and strengthening the long-term bottom line. This updated edition of a Shingo Research Award recipient begins with an overview of Lean methods. It explains how Lean practices can help reduce various frustrations for caregivers, prevent delays and harm for patients, and improve the long-term health of your organization. The second edition of this book presented new material on identifying waste, A3 problem solving, engaging employees in continuous improvement, and strategy deployment. This third edition adds new sections on structured Lean problem solving methods (including Toyota Kata), Lean Design, and other topics. Additional examples, case studies, and explanations are also included throughout the book. Mark Graban is also the co-author, with Joe Swartz, of the book Healthcare Kaizen: Engaging Frontline Staff in Sustainable Continuous Improvements, which is also a Shingo Research Award recipient. Mark and Joe also wrote The Executive’s Guide to Healthcare Kaizen.

Typically entrenched and systemic, healthcare problems require the sort of comprehensive solutions that can only be addressed by a change in culture and a shift in thinking. Applying Lean in Healthcare: A Collection of International Case Studies demonstrates how honest appraisal, intelligent planning, and vigilant follow-up have led to dramatic imp

This book gives the reader an inside look at creating a new healthcare service using practical examples and scenarios one would face if doing it themselves. This book chronicles the journey of a fictitious healthcare delivery organization using the Simpler Design System principles based on Lean methodologies. While the characters and actual story is fictitious, it is based on the journey many healthcare systems and clients have taken, the issues they have faced, and the successes and failures they’ve had. Tools and approaches used are based on the actual work of Simpler. The story format engages readers and is intended to motivate and inspire executive teams to use the tenets of the book as a guide to launch their own successful implementation of an idea-to-launch methodology. Tools include those gleaned from actual application of Lean Product Development, Agile, Design for Six Sigma, and Design Thinking Principles. Through engaging storytelling and practical theory, this book is written from the perspective of a physician leader that agrees to be the executive sponsor for a service redesign. As the story progresses, the sponsor becomes fascinated with the process and becomes the first VP of Innovation within his organization.

Accelerating Health Care Transformation with Lean and Innovation: The Virginia Mason Experience describes how Virginia Mason Medical Center (VMMC) has systematically integrated innovative structures, methods, and cultural practices into its implementation of Lean. Describing how an organization can create a strategy and build a culture of innovation and learning, it supplies concrete examples that show how Lean and innovation can work hand-in-hand to improve and transform value streams. It also explains how to use the voices of patients and their families to drive improvement and innovation.

Two renowned experts in healthcare transformation show how leaders are implementing behavior-driven strategies to ensure quality care and create lasting change. Healthcare is in the midst of a massive disruption. With financial structures in tatters and the future uncertain, this is the moment to begin the revolution. But first, leaders need to learn how to support staff at all levels as they make transformational improvements in care. This book demonstrates that real change is very personal and has to start at the top―whether you’re an executive, governing board member, manager, or physician. A powerful new approach to healthcare leadership, this book showcases executives in health systems around the world as they: Practice behavior-based solutions to organizational problems Learn how to support continuous improvement Be more present in their leadership role Learn how to reflect and assess themselves as leaders Achieve better results for patients Drawing on a wealth of behavioral research, industry case studies, and personal insights from healthcare professionals, the authors explore how change actually happens—from the inside out, top to bottom, throughout the whole organization. You’ll learn how healthcare systems led by people who are compassionate, principled, and engaged can undergo profound and lasting transformation. Find proven strategies for cultivating principle-driven behaviors that can turn the remotest possibilities on the healthcare horizon into a new working reality. This is more than a leadership guide to revolutionizing healthcare. This is about being a force for change that makes life better for patients, caregivers, and all stakeholders. If you want to take the lead in making change happen, start with Becoming the Change.

This book takes the reader through the process to plan, deliver, and follow-up a weeklong Lean Quality Improvement event, usually termed a ‘Rapid Improvement Event’ or ‘Rapid Process Improvement Workshop (RPIW).’ Drawing on the experience of conducting over 100 of these workshops, the book gives readers the information to plan and run their own event. It describes how RPIWs fit in to wider improvement processes and how the reader can maximize these processes in their own organization. These weeklong improvement events are popular in health and social care, but there are no textbooks available to support them. There are several books that describe the use of shorter Kaizen events in health care, but none that describe the process of delivering weeklong events. The events have a rhythm specific to the one-week format, and the book seeks to help people to make use of best practice and to avoid common problems. Based on the experiences of the authors, this book includes an introduction to Lean concepts linked to the relevant part of the process description; examples and templates of forms that can be used in workshops; and photographs of actual events.