The Lens

Robin Ziko and Martin Pallotta, both Process Engineers with UMass in Massachusetts, are here to share about One System One Strategy. Systemic thinking is core to the Catalysis philosophy. There is much risk of waste when separate processes of a system do not work together. UMass has integrated system thinking throughout the organization.

Alli Kulp, Senior Lean Advisor with OhioHealth, helps us to understand how critical “coaching for all” is as anexpectation and how it supports cultural standards of improvement and problem solving.

Jason Cooper, Vice President of Operations with Endsight, an IT Services provider based in California, shares his learnings from joining an Executive Site visit at OhioHealth.

Jamie Stilwill and Joell Teal, faculty with Catalysis, share about the connections between psychological safety and continuous improvement in healthcare.

Artificial Intelligence - AI has stormed all cultures,and all of us are trying to figure out how it fits and how to use it.

Stephanie Steadman, Steph Fuerst and Ebony Babbs-Brown, with the University of Michigan Health System share their experience of attending the Lean Summit for the first time.

Jody Hoffer Gittell and Wale Olaleye, with Relational Coordination Analytics, introduce us to the concept of Relational Coordination, which focuses on the dynamics of how teams relate and work with each other within organizations.

Michelle Kelly, Manager of Continuous Improvement with Seattle Children’s Hospital in Washington state, and Jessica Miller, High Reliability Program Director with CentraCare in St. Cloud Minnesota, describe the return on investment work they are doing in their organizations.

Dr. Terry Platchek from Stanford Medicine Children’s Health shares his 14-year journey of lean and improvement in healthcare.

Al Pilong, new Catalysis executive coach, draws on more than 30 years in healthcare to share what it takes to drive lasting transformation.

Paul Kempinski, recently retired former CEO at Children’s Mercy in Kansas City, joins us to discuss the importance of coaching and mentorship for executives, reflecting on his 40 plus years of leadership in healthcare.

John Toussaint joins the podcast to help introduce our new CEO - Carlos Scholz. Carlos joins Catalysis with over 20 years of lean leadership experience with over 14 years in healthcare.

Sheri Nakamura - Capability Development Manager and David Franklin, M.A. - Senior Organizational Development Consultant, from Stanford Medicine Children’s Hospital explain their work on Improvement Capability Development as part of the Packard Quality Management System at Stanford Children’s.

Emily Swaney - Sr. Director, Alli Kulp - Sr. Advisor, and Todd Schneider - Sr. Lean Advisor, from the Lean Promotion Office at OhioHealth describe how their small improvement team maximizes what they learn at events for their transformation journey.

Jurriaan de Jong, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Operations and Business Analytics at The Ohio State University explains the value and power of taking improvement students to the gemba at a variety of organizations.

Dr. John Toussaint discusses the impact of electronic health information on care delivery and the possibilities of AI to help providers improve care.

Yazmyne Campos, the Accreditation Manager at Torrance Memorial Medical Center in southern California describes her journey into improvement, quality and accreditation, a path she did not originally envision for herself.

Dorothy Hung, Ph.D., Director of the Center for Lean Engagement & Research (CLEAR) at the University of California – Berkley shares the results from research done on advancing health equity and leader practices. These findings will also be presented in a published paper.

Dr. John Toussaint, Catalysis’ Executive Chairman of the Board and Steve Shortell, Co-Founder of the Center for Lean Engagement and Research (CLEAR) at the University of California – Berkley, follow-up with us on the discussion they started on episode 85 about their article “The Better Care Plan: A Blueprint for Improving America’s Healthcare System” and the coalition workgroups that have started up.

John Toussaint, MD joins us as we celebrate our 100th episode of The Lens and helps us reflect on where we have been and where we hope to go in the future.

Kathryn Correia, President and CEO, Emerita for Legacy Health, joins us to share about how she and her team at Legacy navigated multiple crises in Portland, Oregon during the tumultuous year of 2020.

Emily Jackson, Chief Nursing Officer and Vice President of Patient Care Services at New York Presbyterian Hudson Valley Hospital, tells the story of the journey to her current role.

John Boyko, a Director at the Kaizen Promotion Office (KPO) at Washington Hospital Health System in Fremont, California describes how their KPO Team practiced what they preached in reviewing, studying, and adjusting their internal Management System training program.

Sam Nordberg, who serves as the Chief of Integrated Behavioral Health at Reliant Medical Group in Massachusetts, tells us about the platform-based digital Ecosystem they are using to help treat mental health issues.

Carol Shields, the Director of Performance Excellence at Community Health Network in Indiana, explains how their Baldridge award journey has helped the improvement work at Community Health.

Bryan Cutliff, from SA Partners, details the concept and research of self-leadership and its role as an engagement system within organizations.

Julie King, who leads DEI efforts at Advocate Health Care in IL as well as DEI Learning and Education across the national Advocate Health enterprise, joins us to discuss equity in healthcare, as a continuation from the panel at the 2023 Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit.

Dr. Erik Mikaitis, Dr. Katie Radigan, Dr. Joe Palter, Jennifer Rozenich, and Andrea Ramel, from Cook County Health in Chicago, describe the process and work they did in the last year to quickly identify and treat sepsis.

Jenny Han, Director of Design Integration at The Boldt Company, shares about Boldt’s use of Lean in the development of their modular design healthcare units.

Dr. Elizabeth Warner, Chief Medical Officer at Cherry Health in Michigan and author, joins us to describe the concept and practice of Appreciative Inquiry in healthcare.

Jamie Stillwill and Joell Teal, from the University of Washington – Valley Medical Center, share about their multi-tiered internal recognition program.

Joe Sluka and Dr. Jeff Absalon, from Level Zero, discuss alignment in healthcare organizations and the roles of the board, executive team, and physicians in cultivating this alignment.

Molly Rank and David Allison, former staff at Peace Health discuss preventing harm through root cause analysis (RCA) and examine the link between RCA and an organization’s Lean Improvement Strategy.

Mark Graban joins us to talk about his book, The Mistakes that Make Us, which focuses on how to learn from mistakes and create a culture of continuous improvement and innovation.

Dr. John Toussaint, Catalysis’ Executive Board Chair and Steve Shortell, Co-Founder of the Center for Lean Engagement and Research (CLEAR) at the University of California – Berkley, join us to discuss the content of the article they helped write, "The Better Care Plan: A Blueprint for Improving America’s Healthcare System." This article explores how to transition the current fee-for-service system in America to a risk-adjusted payment system with increased transparency on performance to continuously improve outcomes.

Amy Mervak and Mike Radtke, faculty of the workshop, Making Change Stick, focus on the many hidden factors that can be barriers to individual and organizational change efforts, how to make these factors visible, and address them.

Ginger Breeck, Executive Director of Patient Safety & Experience at the Community Health Network in Indiana, shares about Community Health's work to develop a strong and supportive process for Root Cause Analysis, or RCA.

Adam Thompson and Aisha Amira Saidu, of EHA Clinics in Nigeria, Africa share how they are using a variety of non-traditional resources to encourage everyone in their organization to see themselves as part of improvement and lean.

Pam Helander, Catalysis faculty, shares about the pilot workshop, Lean Management System in Action, that Catalysis held at Mount Sinai Morningside in New York City.

Todd Fischer, Ian Wedgwood, Ken Shanahan, and Krystal Cassanelli from the University Campus of UMass Memorial Health describe the redesign of their Emergency Department (ED) to streamline the flow for patient discharge.

Jamie Stilwill and Kristine Nicholson, from the University of Washington, Valley Medical Center in Renton, Washington, share about their Improvement idea program that has been in place for 6 years.

Kim Keller, Mary Ghaly Akella, and Shelcy Kamrud, from Mount Sinai Morningside, join us to share about their experiences transitioning to healthcare from continuous improvement roles within other industries.

Elizabeth Howe, Director of Performance Excellence at Duke University Health System in North Carolina, explains the process that Duke followed to introduce a Workflow Redesign and Digital Integration as part of their Digital Front Door to streamline the patient intake process.

Hear from Glenda Reichert, a Performance Improvement Analyst with UnityPoint Health at Trinity in Muscatine, Iowa, who has been part of the Catalysis community for many years. Glenda shares about how Trinity continues to review and apply shared learnings from Catalysis in their work.

Rachel DeMaster, Director, Care Improvement & Innovation and Kristy Consoli, Administrative Specialist, Care Improvement and Innovation Services from Montage Health located in Monterey, CA join us to talk about their experience and learnings from hosting a recent Gemba visit for fellow Catalysis Healthcare Value Network members.

Kellie Olmstead, Vice President and Chief Transformation Officer at Nemours Children's Health in Jacksonville, Florida joins us to describe the Clinical Pathways improvement work and progress made at Nemours.

John Toussaint, MD, Executive Chairman of the Catalysis Board of Directors, explains the importance of healthcare organizations engaging the Board of Directors in improvement work.

How do you spread and sustain improvement work as an organization? Being able to successfully respond to this challenge is vital to an organization’s success. In this episode we are joined by Kim Keller, Mary Ghaly Akella, and Shelcy Kamrud, from Mount Sinai Morningside, one of our Catalysis Healthcare Value Network members, to discuss their approach and experience implementing a Daily Management System. This team will also be teaching a Pre-Summit workshop “Prioritize Your Process: Tactics to Improve, Spread and Sustain Daily Management” at our annual Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit in Chicago this June. To learn more about their workshop, visit createvalue.org/summit.

Effective problem solving is foundational in a culture of continuous improvement. Today we are joined by Catalysis faculty member, Jenn Christison, to hear about the role collaboration plays in supporting more innovative problem solving. Jenn will delve even further into this topic during her Pre-Summit workshop “Engaging Your Teams in Collaborative Process Design” in Chicago this June. Please go to createvalue.org/summit to learn more.

Elina Reponen, MD, Ph.D., Chief Anesthesiologist at the Helsinki University Hospital, shares with us about her experience in Finland using the self-assessment instrument for Lean implementation in a healthcare system that was developed by CLEAR (the Center for Lean Engagement and Research).