When I talk with health care leaders about lean improvement work, I’m often asked, “How much should I expect to receive as a return?” At Virginia Mason, we don’t focus on financial returns after every event. Instead, we focus on identifying and eliminating waste for the sake of our patients and our staff — which in turn results in long-term financial benefits. In health care, we pay our employees for their time, but how much of...
Measuring Success When the Lean Improvement Work...
Recent Blog Posts
How Can Lean Improvement Work Engage Staff and...

An interview with Cathie Furman, executive faculty member at Virginia Mason Institute When you’re doing lean work, how do you measure ROI? CF: That’s a question we...

Why Is a Value Stream Map Important for...

A value stream map is a visual depiction of a process from a request for a product or services through delivery. At Virginia Mason, we depict this process not from...

Why Adding More Space Isn’t the Only Answer to...

The best health care leaders are always looking for ways to increase quality and run their business more efficiently. To understand their business, they need to...

What Is the Cost of Not Having a Strategic...

When you think about costs in health care, what costs do you think are hurting us the most? EN: To me, the cost of a broken care system to patients and families is...

How a Value Stream Can Help You Produce...

What is a value stream? A value stream is an improvement philosophy, a systemic way of thinking about the flow of delivering quality health care. Providing value to...

How Lean Health Care Improves Quality, Values...

The best health care ensures that every aspect of every process is in the best interest of patients. At Virginia Mason, we know that by empowering teams to remove...

Leader Tools to Prevent Medical Errors

What health care leaders can do to reduce the number of medical errors in their organization: It starts with culture. A culture of empowerment enables an...

Getting Closer to Continuous Flow in Health Care

What is continuous flow? In manufacturing, continuous flow occurs when a single product is built from start to finish on an assembly line that doesn’t stop. Henry...

Three Ways to Achieve a Future of Better Health...

As a physician and teacher of lean health care methods and tools, I’m often part of conversations with my peers about where the future of health care is going....

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 ...