Improvement Insights Blog
Outstanding Improvement Posters at Colorado Lean Network Conference
At the Colorado Lean Network (CLN) Conference, Children’s Hospital put up seven outstanding improvement project posters. They all used control charts, histograms and the tools of quality to tell the story. There were more control charts on those seven posters than in the 100s at last years IHI–Institute for Healthcare Improvement conference.
Some exemplar hospitals are using the tools of quality to improve healthcare. Most are not. It’s time to stop admiring the problem. Start using the tools of quality to save time, save money and save lives.
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“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals” and QI Macros [software].
“I’m here at the Colorado Lean Network Conference here in Colorado. There were some posters put up on the board around here and oddly enough, I started looking at all of them. Strangely enough, they all were using the Tools of Quality like control charts. I don’t know if you can see these, but there’s control charts and histograms and the Tools of Quality used on these charts.
“Now, every year I go around to the Institute for Healthcare Improvement [conference] and Magnet Conference, and there are more control charts in this room than there have been at the IHI in the last two years, because I go around and track all of that stuff.
“So what does this mean? This means somebody out there’s actually using the Tools of Quality to try and improve health care and health care quality in ways that only control charts and histograms can do.
“So, I’m going to give you a suggestion: Healthcare needs to stop admiring the problem and start using the Tools of Quality like these improvement teams have.
“Let’s go out and improve something this week.”
