Guest post by John Hunter. This webcast shows Mike Stoecklein’s presentation, Understanding and Misunderstanding Variation in Healthcare, at the 2015 Deming Research Seminar. The companion research paper that Mike wrote, Understanding and Misunderstanding Variation in Healthcare is packed with additional information on the topics he discusses and includes a summary of interviews with 40 individuals […]
I like to share interesting articles (and other resources) that provide examples of organizations applying Deming’s ideas in practice. Here is another of those articles: How Intermountain Trimmed Health Care Costs Through Robust Quality Improvement Efforts by Brent James and Lucy Savitz (2011). Since 1988, Intermountain Healthcare has applied to healthcare-delivery the insights of W. […]
Guest post by Mark Graban About ten years ago, somebody sent me a PDF file of Dr. Deming’s “Some Notes on Management in a Hospital.” I felt like somebody had shared a bootleg tape of my favorite band, as I wasn’t sure the article had ever been formally published anywhere. Since I wasn’t sure if […]
Skip Steward, Chief Improvement Office (CIO) for Baptist Memorial Health Care Corporation in Memphis, Tennessee is the latest guest on the Deming Podcast (download the podcast). Dr. Deming’s thinking continues to influence me, not only in things like PDSA thinking, but also in some of those other fundamental principles around constancy of purpose, around how […]
The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande is a wonderful book about how to create systems that work. At the core the Checklist Manifesto is about determining the critical process conditions and creating a system to assure that the those process items are properly handled. In the book Atul Gawande paraphrases Daniel Boorman, veteran pilot who […]
Using data to understand the system and validate our theories and successful improvements is an important part managing well. In some cases it is fairly easy to understand and collect data that provides a clear and accurate measure of what we care about. But getting data that helps can also be very challenging. Creating a […]
2011 ASA Deming Lecture (edit: ASA broke the link, so it was removed) by Roger Hoerl, GE Global Research: The World Is Calling; Should We Answer? Roger starts by discussing some areas of Deming’s work that are not getting the focus they deserve. I’d like to focus on a few areas of Dr. Deming’s career […]
We used to publish a newsletter. In the Fall 2006 Deming Interaction we published an excerpt from an article by Dr. Deming: Some Notes on Management in a Hospital (published in 1990 in the Journal of the Society of Health Systems). In the lecture discussed from our last blog post I learned something I didn’t […]
From Chaos to Process at Fitness Matters, a Deming Institute podcast (download podcast) with Travis Timmons, owner of Fitness Matters and Kelly Allan, Senior Associate of Kelly Allan Associates and Chair of the Deming Institute Advisory Board. Travis: A few years ago I would ask is there was any issues or things that could be […]
Guest post by Victoria Morgan The quality of maternity services in England is in the spotlight. National audits have shown that whilst outcomes have improved significantly over the last decade there is marked variation in outcomes that cannot be explained by clinical and social risk factors (Mothers and Babies: Reducing Risk through Audits and Confidential […]