Daily Kaizen

Lee commented to me that I hadn’t posted in awhile (a long while) so I thought I would jump in to let readers know that our paths are forking in a more sustained way.

I have accepted a position with The Permanente Federation, LLC, and have made Washington, DC my permanent home, leaving Seattle (“The other Washington”), and am still on the LEAN journey, now starting at a different level. This company supports the 8 medical groups of Kaiser Permanente and Group Health Permanente, the medical group associated with Group Health Cooperative, where Lee works. We’re still technically in the same family, luckily.

I’m a little bit of a Desi Porter (for those of you who have picked up John Shook’s latest book from the Lean Enterprise Institute), given a charge and pursuing the same steps that Desi is in the book, to create a strategy for improvement in a specific area. The improvement methodologies in this organization are dynamic and changing, which is an opportunity for me to start at the beginning, with a Gemba Tour, hosted by one of Kaisier Permanente’s regions. That’s where I am now in real life. I’m farther ahead in the reading in John Shook’s book – I work at a different level in this organization, so it is much more important to take the time to go through the steps of managing to learn. Publication of the book was great timing in that regard.

I’m being given license to blog about my experiences, as was the case at Group Health Cooperative. I will blog mostly about them on my professional blog at http://www.tedeytan.com, which integrates my interests in patient empowerment, the Washington, DC region, and LEAN, all together. There’s an RSS feed that can be subscribed to there, of course. I think all three things fit really well together, and in 2008 in this part of the country, especially so!

It’s worth pointing out that this blog has been going since 2005, establishing the value (I think) of health care organizations talking about their journeys publicly. Who’s next?

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