Denver Health Lean Academy

Lean Tuesday 💡 | Using metrics the way they were meant to be used ✅ Leading and lagging metrics aren’t competing ideas. They answer different leadership questions. ✅ Lagging metrics help leaders align around what matters most. Leading metrics help leaders learn how the work is actually happening. ✅ When those roles get mixed up, teams will spend more time explaining results than improving processes. 👍 This week’s Lean Tuesday is a reminder that: outcomes set direction, processes drive outcomes, and leadership connects the two.

📚 #July Lean Book Recommendation: Lean Healthcare By Bradley Schultz and David Munch, MD In healthcare, Lean cannot remain a collection of tools, projects, or isolated improvement events. To create sustainable change, Lean must become a leadership system — one that shapes how leaders think, coach, align, and support improvement every day. 😊Lean Healthcare: Building a Leadership System for High Reliability offers a timely reminder that high reliability is not achieved through good intentions alone. It is built through disciplined leadership behaviors, daily management, frontline engagement, and a clear connection between strategy and the work happening closest to patients. For healthcare leaders, the question is not simply, “Are we doing Lean?” The better question may be: "Are we building the leadership system that allows people to improve care every day?" #LeanHealthcare #LeanLeadership #HighReliability #ContinuousImprovement #HealthcareImprovement #DailyManagement #LeadershipDevelopment #PatientCare #DenverHealthLeanAcademy

🔷 Lean Tuesday reminder from Denver Health Lean Academy: Stop blaming people. Start improving systems. When something goes wrong, it is easy to label it as human error or a staff mistake. But in Lean, that is rarely where the learning should stop. Most mistakes are not just about the individual. They are often signals of deeper system issues: 👍 Broken workflows 👍 Unclear protocols 👍Poor handoffs 👍Understaffing or overload 👍Equipment or EHR barriers If the same mistake could happen to another capable person in the same environment, then the process deserves our attention. At Denver Health Lean Academy, one of the most important mindsets we teach is this: Fix the process, not the person. 😊 That does not mean accountability disappears. It means real accountability includes designing safer, clearer, more reliable systems so frontline teams can succeed and patients receive better care.

🧀 Lean Tuesday: What can the Swiss Cheese Model teach us about safer, more reliable systems? In healthcare, adverse events rarely result from a single mistake. More often, they occur when gaps across multiple layers of defense—such as standard work, staff training, in-process controls, and quality inspections—temporarily align. These “holes” can emerge from human limitations, process weaknesses, design flaws, competing priorities, or delivery pressure. A Lean response is not to ask, “Who made the mistake?” but rather: 🔹 Where did the process allow the risk to pass through? 🔹 Which safeguards were missing, weak, or difficult to follow? 🔹 How can we strengthen the entire system—not just correct the immediate issue? The Swiss Cheese Model reminds us that improvement requires both identifying and addressing gaps at each layer and building stronger systems that prevent problems from reaching patients, staff, and communities. When we focus on processes rather than blame, we create the psychological safety needed to learn, improve, and build more reliable care systems. Fix the system, and the results will follow. #LeanTuesday #DenverHealthLeanAcademy #LeanHealthcare #PatientSafety #QualityImprovement #SystemsThinking #ContinuousImprovement #RespectForPeople #HealthcareLeadership

🔹 Lean Tuesday at Denver Health Lean Academy 🔹 This week, we are highlighting Poka-Yoke — the practice of mistake-proofing work so that the right action is easier, safer, and more reliable. 💡🏥 In healthcare, Poka-Yoke is not just about efficiency — it is about protecting patients, supporting staff, and building systems that prevent errors before they happen. From: ✅ positive patient identification ✅ barcode medication scanning ✅ hard stops in the EHR ✅ standardized setup trays ✅ incompatible tubing connections ✅ surgical count verification …to many other daily safeguards, Poka-Yoke reminds us that excellence is not about expecting people to be perfect — it is about designing processes that make safe care the default. Small design choices can make a big difference. When we reduce opportunities for error, we improve both the patient experience and the work experience for our teams. 🙌 What are some of the best examples of mistake-proofing in healthcare that you have seen in practice? ____________________________ #LeanTuesday #LeanAcademy #DenverHealth #LeanHealthcare #PokaYoke #MistakeProofing #PatientSafety #OperationalExcellence #ContinuousImprovement #HealthcareInnovation #RespectForPeople

Happy 250th birthday, America! Wishing everyone a safe, healthy and joyful Fourth of July weekend. ❤️ 🤍 💙

Do you have a continuous improvement story, lesson, or practical tool to share? The Colorado Lean Network, a non-profit, volunteer-led membership organization, is inviting speakers for our upcoming CLN Summit, an engaging gathering of approximately 150 leaders, educators, and improvement practitioners from across Colorado. We’re looking for presenters who can inspire, challenge, and equip our community with real-world insights, practical approaches, and lessons learned in continuous improvement, Lean, problem-solving, leadership, culture, and organizational excellence. If you’re passionate about helping others learn and improve, we’d love to hear from you. Interested in speaking at the CLN Summit? Let’s connect! https://lnkd.in/gw2JWSU2

Lean Tuesday: Gemba Curve 🔷 Sometimes the problem looks simple… until we get closer. The farther we are from the work, the easier it is to feel confident about the solution. 🙂 But when we go to gemba, we often see the real story: unclear handoffs, competing priorities, workarounds, delays, and people doing their best within imperfect systems. 🧩 🔷That is why “go and see” matters. It helps us replace assumptions with understanding — and judgment with curiosity. 💙 This Lean Tuesday, let’s pause before solving from a distance. - Go closer. - Listen deeper. - Understand the work. - Improve the system. #LeanTuesday #DenverHealthLeanAcademy #Gemba #LeanThinking #ContinuousImprovement #RespectForPeople #HealthcareImprovement

🎆July is a great time to build Lean capability — and Denver Health Lean Academy is celebrating with a special offer. This month, we are offering several in-person Lean courses designed to help leaders, teams, and improvement partners strengthen the way they solve problems, manage daily work, and align around strategy. For a limited time, use code EOY2026 for a 10% discount on registration. Scan the QR code on the flyer to learn more and reserve your spot. Let’s make improvement practical, visible, and actionable — one course at a time. 😊 #LeanThinking #ContinuousImprovement #HealthcareLeadership #Kaizen #DailyManagement #Obeya #A3Thinking #DenverHealthLeanAcademy #OperationalExcellence

We are proud to share that Denver Health has been ranked No. 1 in the U.S. for value of care by the Lown Institute. 👏 “Being recognized by the Lown Institute as No. 1 for value of care both nationally and in Colorado reflects the purpose that drives our teams every day,” said Chief Quality Officer Heidi Wald, MD, MSPH. Congratulations to our teams on this well-earned recognition! 🔗 Read the news release to learn more: https://lnkd.in/dxkeUfPH