Are You Going 5S Lean?

In an interview with HHN Magazine, The Joint Commission president, Mark Chassin, M.D., urged hospitals to think “process” instead of “best practices” as a way to improve quality and patient safety.

“Hospitals that focus more directly on continuous process improvement,” Chassin says, “can begin to adapt the principles of so-called high reliability organizations, which create tightly defined feedback loops that encourage employees to report minor problems before they rise to the level of errors or lapses in the quality of care provided.”

While this may seem like a paradigm shift from “quality control”, in actuality, it is a reaffirmation of the health care community’s commitment to providing quality care.

Watch for future posts about how to translate “5S” for use in the health care setting.