Virginia Mason Institute


Virginia Mason’s Respect for People initiative has been a decade-long program designed to sustain a culture of respect across the health system including training all employees in ways to respect one another in the workplace. The original foundation of this work, a Virginia Mason goal for both 2012 and 2013, was triggered in part by a visit from Dr. Lucian L. Leape, an international leader in health care safety. As Dr. Leape...
Respect for People: A Building Block for Engaged...
Recent Blog Posts
Bringing Disruptive Innovation to the Front Lines...

Virginia Mason spine surgeon, Rajiv Sethi, MD, speaks about why there should be greater urgency to improve the delivery of health care. The U.S. health care...

Overcoming Provider Burnout and Restoring Joy to...

Understanding the burnout epidemic Provider burnout has reached concerning levels at health systems across the world. When burnout leads to the permanently damaged...

Flow in Primary Care

Primary care physicians work on the frontlines of care delivery where they strive to serve a growing range of patients with increasingly complex needs, often...

Leveraging 3P in Health Care Facility Design

For more than a decade, interactive and intensive improvement meetings — also known as kaizen events — have created a forum to refine and improve the quality,...

Eliminating Health Care Waste Improves Sepsis...

Why waste elimination is essential to improving health care Waste elimination is essential to the Virginia Mason Production System (VMPS) and lean methodology. The...

Empowering teams to identify and address sepsis,...

Virginia Mason staff members share their experiences implementing the Sepsis Power Hour protocol Sepsis is a factor in one out of every two to three hospital deaths...

The Flows of Medicine

Proper flow influences predictable and reliable processes The experience of flow can be found in nature. A river, for example, has movement, a certain pace to it, a...

Capturing the Patient Voice: Part 2

When patients need a passport In Capturing the Patient Voice – Part 1, we explored how to facilitate greater patient engagement in a health care setting. We also...

How Takt Time Can Help Health Care Organizations...

“Takt” is a German word that means “beat” or “pace.” My foundational understanding of pace takes me back to my early days of studying piano and using the mechanical...

Selected Resources

Healthcare Improvement Insights

Explore articles, case studies, and research that help healthcare leaders drive sustainable improvement.

Mistake Proofing in Ambulatory, Procedural, and ...

Mistake Proofing in Ambulatory, Procedural, and ...

Welcome to our blog miniseries: Transforming Healthcare, featuring some of the biggest takeaways ...

Mistake Proofing in Ambulatory, Procedural, and Inpatient Care

Welcome to our blog miniseries: Transforming Healthcare, featuring some of the biggest takeaways ...

Culture of Care

Culture of Care

Explore how equity-focused improvement, coaching and lived experience can strengthen staff ...

Culture of Care

Explore how equity-focused improvement, coaching and lived experience can strengthen staff ...

Bridge to Excellence with Three Rivers Hospital

Bridge to Excellence with Three Rivers Hospital

Join host Brenda McLeod in conversation with Jamie Boyer, German Meza, and Karen Gifford about ...

Bridge to Excellence with Three Rivers Hospital

Join host Brenda McLeod in conversation with Jamie Boyer, German Meza, and Karen Gifford about ...