Katie Couric and the CBS Evening News featured Seattle's Virginia Mason Hospital where they are embracing the Japanese concept of 改善, kaizen, for continuous improvement on hospital procedures. They are modeling their approach on concepts develop by Japanese automaker, Toyota. The CEO of Virginia Mason, Dr. Gary Kaplan, takes Virginia Mason staff to Toyota's factories annually to adapt practices for solutions to problems on the hospital floor. The results of continuous improvements and efficiencies have been pretty staggering. According to the article, treatment time was cut from an average of 66 days to 12 days.
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