Improvement Insights Blog

Ever heard a word or phrase that you’ve never heard before? Might just be jargon for something you already know. Here’s how to avoid being baffled by jargon:

“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals” and the QI Macros [software].

“Very often, we get calls from people and they [ask], “Do you have an XYZ chart / plot / whatever / stat?” It’s like… well, I’ve never heard of it before. Somebody called up and said, “Do you have a titration plot?” I thought, “I’ve never heard of it that way,” but I went out and did a little Googling.

“It turned out that a titration plot is just a scatter plot of titration data… it’s a scatter plot of a certain type of data, so yes, we did have it, right?

“So I want you to get this idea that if you hear a funky term, maybe Google it and see what it really means and see if it’s just something simple that you can do already? You know, I think people sometimes try and baffle us with jargon or something, and so your challenge – should you choose to accept it – is [think] “I wonder what that is? Let’s Google it.” Right? Or “Let’s ‘Chat GPT’ it,” or “Well, let’s do something with it” and figure out what it is and how it might be useful to me.

“That’s my Improvement Insight for this week: Let’s create hassle-free healthcare, a hassle-free America. Let’s go out and improve something this week.”