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Some people think they have to climb Mount Everest or do a fire walk to overcome their fears. Maybe it’s just as easy to do the thing you are afraid to do in your normal life. Maybe it’s time to climb Mount Quality. Maybe it’s time to create a hassle-free experience for your company’s customers.
“My wife’s been watching these shows about people climbing Mount Everest. You see people, they’re waiting for the final the final [ascent] and there’s a huge queue of people waiting to go up to the top of Mount Everest… (It’s like [maybe] they should put in an express lane or something!)
Continue Reading "Climbing Mount Quality"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Healthcare, Improvement Insights, Lean, Six Sigma.
A recent report from NAHQ (National Association of Healthcare Quality) found that three-quarters of hospitals had a quality department. But to achieve hassle-free healthcare and zero harm, it will take more than a department to achieve the results desired.
“The National Association for Healthcare Quality just released a report on Quality professionals in health care, and it turns out that in a lot of the situations, about three-quarters of the people responding reported that in their hospital or wherever, that Quality was a department, and in about a quarter [of the responses] Quality was individuals working on stuff.
“Let me be clear about this: Quality is not a department.
Continue Reading "Quality Is Not a Department"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Healthcare, Improvement Insights.
Several attendees told me they had ripped out their line charts and started using Control Charts for their KPIs. Here’s why:
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma for Hospitals” and the QI Macros [software].
“We were out at the National Association for Healthcare Quality conference; I was speaking and we were exhibiting there. After I spoke, I had a couple people come up to me who said they’d seen me at the previous year’s convention talking about how to improve things and how line [charts] and bar charts can be harming patients and they said, “You know, I went back to my hospital and we ripped out all of our line charts and we put in control charts for all of our key process indicators.
Continue Reading "Control Charts for KPIs"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Agile Lean Six Sigma, Healthcare, Improvement Insights, QI Macros, Six Sigma.
How to “hack” Lean Six Sigma for Healthcare Quality and Safety. Recorded at NAHQ 2018 in Minneapolis, MN.
Continue Reading "Agile Lean Six Sigma for Healthcare – NAHQ 2018"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Agile Lean Six Sigma, Healthcare, Jay Arthur Blog.
A district level manager was hopping mad about something. I decided to see if I could use pacing and leading to calm her down and get back to solving the problem to meet her needs.
Continue Reading "Building Rapport with Improvement Teams – Step 3"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Healthcare, Improvement Insights, Lean, Manufacturing, QI Macros, Service, Six Sigma.
My boss sent me to talk to a cranky manager about a software project he wanted to do. Here’s how I used non-verbal rapport to connect with him in 30-60 seconds.
Continue Reading "Building Rapport with Improvement Teams – Step 2"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Healthcare, Improvement Insights, Lean, Manufacturing, QI Macros, Service, Six Sigma.
I was tasked with training the leadership team of U S West, the president and his vice presidents. Here’s how I started to build rapport with the leadership team and every team afterwards.
Continue Reading "Building Rapport with Improvement Teams – Step 1"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Healthcare, Improvement Insights, Lean, Manufacturing, Service, Six Sigma.
To commemorate Nurses Week 2018, Jay speaks with LeAnn Thieman, author of “Chicken Soup for the Nurses Soul” and the founder of SelfCare for HealthCare.
Continue Reading "Celebrate Nurses Week 2018"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Healthcare, Improvement Insights.
The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety (Feb 2018) has an article entitled “Temporal Trends in Fall Rates with the Implementation of a Multifaceted Fall Prevention Program.” Ouch!
I believe the story could have been told easily with quality improvement tools, so here’s how I’d go about it. First, there are a number of tables (i.e., spreadsheets of performance data) like the one below.
The first year, 2003, had only 200 falls because they started measuring in July. The first full year of measurement was 2004.
It would be easy to turn these into control charts, but the authors chose a boxplot with a trend line of predicted falls.
Continue Reading "Reducing Patient Falls – A Case Study"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Healthcare, Jay Arthur Blog, QI Macros, Six Sigma.
I have been thinking for some time that someone would come along, start buying up hospitals and forcing them to adopt the Lean principles of Amazon and Six Sigma to achieve the “science and evidence” that Don Berwick has been challenging the IHI to adopt.
https://money.cnn.com/2018/01/30/news/companies/amazon-berkshire-jpmorgan-health-insurance/index.html
Warren Buffet has the money, but usually invests in “well-run” companies, not ones in trouble. An estimated half of all hospitals are in financial trouble (often because of the lack of Lean Six Sigma).
Bezos and Amazon have the operational efficiency needed in virtually all healthcare environments.
Dimon has a big bank.
They are all worried about the quality of healthcare and the rising costs.
Continue Reading "Hospital Costs a “Hungry Tapeworm on U.S. Economy” says Warren Buffett"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Healthcare, Lean, QI Macros, Six Sigma.
