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 filling in the care gaps for underserved populations. This work is complex, challenging, difficult, and often stressful. Furthermore, it is a job made more difficult by the demands of direct care documentation and indirect care — forms, referral management, formulary...
Flow in Primary Care
Recent Blog Posts
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 Leaders Can Inspire a Culture Shift

An interview with Celeste Derheimer, Senior Partner at Virginia Mason Institute What is the best part of working with a health care team within a lean construct? CD:

Using Leadership Kata to Achieve Key Results in...

Kata, a Japanese word, can be used to describe a routine or pattern of behavior. At Virginia Mason, leadership kata is made up of the daily behaviors and activities...

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...

How a Team Took on a Small Space to Improve Care...

Everyone knows that lean tools and methods are great for improving health care processes. But many don’t know that culture is key to making innovative changes that...

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 ...