Optimizing Flow


The Challenge: Inefficiencies continue to plague healthcare due to silos that harm morale, financial performance, and patient experience What are silos? Organizational silos are separations based on department, specialization, or location. While it might seem logical to keep teams separate and distinct from each other, the business world has long acknowledged that silos create misunderstanding, inefficiency, and unnecessary...
5 Tactics to Break Down Silos and Support...
Recent Blog Posts
Patients Shouldn’t Wait: Enhancing Patient Access...

The fracture clinic at Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust (SaSH) struggled with issues of patient access and appointment backlogs for years. The clinic averages...

The Health Care Executive’s Role in Addressing...

I have been a health care leader at Virginia Mason Health System for over 30 years, as well as an executive sensei to other health care organizations. It has been...

Leadership and Improvement During Disruption:...

We are seeing an air of hope as healthcare continues to play a critical public role toward managing the impacts and ongoing challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. The...

Vaccination Flow 101: Three Fundamentals for...

We are hearing again and again that now is the time to look back to the fundamentals of process improvement as we face ongoing challenges related to COVID-19. Now...

Improving Patient Flow Helps Conquer Health...

In 1967, renowned management consultant, educator and author, Peter Drucker, wrote that hospitals were the most complex organizations ever created. In the more than...

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,...

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...

Selected Resources

Healthcare Improvement Insights

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

Mistake-Proofing Primary Care

Mistake-Proofing Primary Care

Start Your Lean Health Care Journey Learn More Problem Virginia Mason recognized that mistakes and ...

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Mistake-Proofing Primary Care

Start Your Lean Health Care Journey Learn More Problem Virginia Mason recognized that mistakes and ...

Why a Midwest Health System Went to Virginia ...

Why a Midwest Health System Went to Virginia ...

“The fact that Virginia Mason is driven by the same purpose we are – serving patients and ...

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Why a Midwest Health System Went to Virginia Mason Institute for Help

“The fact that Virginia Mason is driven by the same purpose we are – serving patients and ...

Managing Phone Calls in Primary Care

Managing Phone Calls in Primary Care

Problem Responding to patient phone calls at Virginia Mason consumed a great deal of clinic time ...

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Managing Phone Calls in Primary Care

Problem Responding to patient phone calls at Virginia Mason consumed a great deal of clinic time ...