I have just finished rereading Walter A. Shewhart's 1939 book Statistical Method from the Viewpoint of Quality Control (Dover Publications, 1986). Mine is the 1986 edition, which has a foreword by W. Edwards Deming. Shewhart, a Bell Labs man, pioneered quality control and was a major inspiration…

Several years ago, I penned a column entitled, “Nurse, I’m Ready for My Cappuccino!”  The article was an interview with Gerard van Grinsven,  the new CEO and president of the Henry Ford West Bloomfield Hospital, which was to be located in a Detroit suburb. At the time of my interview, Van Grinsven…

Here at Quality Digest, we get a lot of mail: Some of it’s critical, some of it’s praiseworthy, some of it’s cantankerous, and some of it’s challenging. All of it is insightful. And then, every once in awhile, something comes along that simply... well... The following was sent to us from a…

Didrick Medical Inc. is a small privately owned company located in Naples, Florida, that designs and fabricates active-function artificial finger prostheses, called the X-Finger, for partial finger amputees. The owner refined the design for more than six years before he took it to the marketplace…

The FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) posted a notice of draft guidance that will require all medical device adverse-event reports to be submitted electronically. While the process of electronic submission of data is a more efficient and traceable means for reporting, it…

(Georgia Tech Enterprise Innovation Institute: Atlanta) -- Debbie Guzman, laboratory director at Athens Regional Medical Center, says that implementing lean principles in a health care setting is especially challenging. Traditionally used in manufacturing, lean refers to an operational strategy…

When I started Productivity Inc. Press in 1979, quality of work life (QWL) was a very popular symbol for American unionism. Unions wanted workers to have a quality of work life, however, I don’t believe they understood what quality of work life really meant. The unions wanted workers to have a…

(NCQA: Washington) -- “The State of Health Care Quality 2009,” an annual report, now in its 13th year, provided by the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA), finds that the quality of U.S. health care was virtually stagnant in 2008, a disturbing slowdown after a decade of improvements.…

A couple of years ago, I was featured on CNN pouring out the contents of my backpack. The story was about how I ran my business, virtually, from wherever I was with the trusty items carried on my back. As you might imagine, there were all the usual suspects: my laptop, iPhone, digital camera,…

Story update 10/23/2009: The link to the prerecorded webinar mentioned at the end of the article has been corrected.   The U.S. economy runs on service. From front-line service in transactional industries such as retail, banking, hospitality and food service, to technical support for high-tech…

A quality management system is a framework of processes and procedures that are used to ensure that an organization can fulfill all tasks required to achieve its goals, strategies, and objectives. The majority of businesses around the world have some sort of well-defined quality management…

Ten years after the Institute of Medicine released its influential report "To Err Is Human" (www.iom.edu/en/Reports/1999/To-Err-is-Human-Building-A-Safer-Health-System.aspx), hospital care still has many safety problems, and the quality of care remains lower than it should be in many institutions…

In 2005, according to a BBC News report at the time, operating rooms all over the United Kingdom were thrown into chaos and operations canceled due to broken, missing, or dirty surgical instruments. The Royal College of Surgeons called for a national audit of decontamination units, following a…

What if hospital leaders had an easier, more streamlined way to chart an improvement path for their organizations? Imagine a list of key processes that could—if implemented reliably—lower mortality,  reduce harm, lessen delays, create a better patient experience, and lower costs. This possibility…

In this case study of reverse engineering and rapid prototyping we will look at a company that developed an initial prototype of an anti-snoring device based on many years of research in the field of dentistry. The company’s main dental advisor is a pioneering dentist in the research and…

Regular readers of my column know that I abhor surveys that don’t provide some type of incentive or discount on a future purchase for completing the survey. I realize that I may have discussed this subject ad nauseam, but have you noticed that every store, restaurant, gas station, doctor’s office…

Radio frequency identification (RFID) systems are widely used for applications that include inventory management, package tracking, toll collection, passport identification, and airport luggage security. More recently, these systems have found their way into medical environments to track patients…

A n emergency response organization differs substantially from our usual public health organization for day-to-day business. However, as the spring 2009 H1N1 (also referred to as swine flu) outbreak highlighted, usual public health processes are fundamental for effectively responding to a…

All the talk of health care reform has resulted in many hospitals turning to lean Six Sigma to help improve efficiency and aid in cost cutting. However, health care efficiency expert Ron Wince contends that many of these facilities are not applying the tools properly and therefore will not reap…

 Story update 9/23/09: Reference to 9.5.2.f was changed to 8.5.2.f in second paragraph. As more suppliers are required by their regulators and customers to achieve ISO 9001 certification, and because certification symbolizes a point of competitive differentiation in a tight economy, emphasis on…

As companies downsize, they cut down on the number of employees, or move, or close, and thousands find themselves without jobs in a highly competitive job market that they never anticipated. A 55-year-old former NCR systems engineer is in line for jobs along with whiz-bang new college graduates,…

“Writing is not a job; it’s a hobby!” thundered my father when I told him my plans for college. “You need to get a profession: Medicine, law, engineering, or accounting.”  I cheerlessly acquiesced and enrolled in a pre-med program, but at the end of my first year, after struggling through…

Resistance to the National Animal Identification Scheme (NAIS) has been strong. This six-year-old USDA policy initiative to reduce the catastrophic effects to the livestock and meat industry from a major animal disease outbreak has received so much negative reaction from so many and now seems…

As moviegoers, we have all seen a wide range of animation—from early Disney features, such as “Snow White,” to Japanese anime, and Pixar’s “Toy Story,” to an assortment of recent blockbusters that seamlessly integrate animation with real actors. With each release, the movie magic gets more amazing…

Following my article on Leptokurtophobics (Do You Have Leptokurtophobia?) it was almost inevitable that we should hear from one. We were fortunate to have someone as articulate as Forrest Breyfogle III to write the response. However, rather than offering a critique of the points raised in my…