Category: HEALTHCARE/MEDICAL

I had the pleasure of meeting Norman Faull late last year in Johannesburg when we presented together some thoughts on process improvement to South African hospital folks. He is as kind, thoughtful, and respectful a person as you could imagine. So when he reports that he is not necessarily respectful, I take notice. His message is important, so please stick with me–especially if you are a Lean advocate or practitioner.Here’s a recent column he wrote. Excerpts:Some of us are not very good at showing respect.‘Show respect’ is one of the core calls we make to lean leaders. That simple phrase was presented to me at a Lean Summit in the USA around 2007. The speaker was John Shook and he was quoting from a

It’s hard to overstate the importance of the work being done by the multi-state Children’s Hospitals’ Solutions for Patient Safety (SPS) Network. What started as a cooperative effort among the Ohio hospitals–“We compete on everything, but we don’t compete on safety”–has spread beyond, representing over 70 pediatric hospitals across the country.The network sets forth an urgent mission: To eliminate serious harm across all children’s hospitals.They note:The Network has compelling evidence that shows that if the SPS Prevention Bundles are implemented reliably, the Network will reduce harm. Employing high-reliability concepts and quality improvement science methods, SPS is focused on reducing harm by preventing readmissions, serious safety events, and the ten hospital-acquired conditions (HACs) below:Adverse drug events (ADE)Catheter-associated urinary tract