Continuous Improvement in Healthcare: Daily Kaizen

Engage staff, improve quality, enhance safety, and reduce waste with Lean healthcare methods from Shingo Award–winning a

Build a Culture Where Everyone Improves, Every Day
In the fast-paced, high-pressure world of healthcare, improvement can’t just happen in occasional bursts. Sustainable success comes from creating a culture where staff at all levels continuously identify and solve problems, making care better for patients while making work easier and more fulfilling for employees.

This course introduces you to Daily Kaizen, a core element of Lean healthcare that enables organizations to achieve lasting, measurable results through small, meaningful changes made every day.

Your instructor, Mark Graban, is a Shingo Award–winning author, international speaker, and trusted consultant to healthcare systems worldwide. He co-authored Healthcare Kaizen: Engaging Front-Line Staff in Sustainable Continuous Improvements and wrote Lean Hospitals. His practical, people-centered approach helps organizations improve quality, safety, patient satisfaction, and operational performance—while building a workplace culture based on respect and engagement.

Why Daily Kaizen Matters
Many healthcare organizations use Rapid Improvement Events or large projects to drive change. While these can be effective, Daily Kaizen complements them by creating continuous momentum. It ensures improvement isn’t dependent on special events—it’s part of the everyday work.

Daily Kaizen empowers nurses, physicians, support staff, and leaders to collaborate, test ideas quickly, and implement solutions that directly address real-world challenges. The result: better care, less waste, more engaged employees, and higher patient satisfaction.

What You’ll Gain from This Course
Through interactive lectures, case studies, and practical examples, you’ll learn how Daily Kaizen works in real healthcare settings—and how to start applying it in your own. You’ll see how organizations like Franciscan St. Francis Health System and ThedaCare have embedded continuous improvement into their culture, generating measurable benefits year after year.

By the end of the course, you will be able to:

• Understand the principles and purpose of Daily Kaizen in healthcare

• Recognize the cultural and leadership factors that enable continuous improvement

• Identify strategies to engage staff in generating and acting on improvement ideas

• Connect Kaizen work to your organization’s goals for quality, safety, and efficiency

Who This Course Is For (and Not For)

This course is designed for anyone in healthcare who wants to make processes better, safer, and more efficient—whether you’re new to improvement or looking to strengthen an existing Lean program. It will be especially valuable for:

• Healthcare leaders and managers seeking practical methods to build a culture of continuous improvement.

• Front-line healthcare professionals—nurses, physicians, therapists, technicians, and support staff—who want to contribute ideas and solve problems.

• Quality, patient safety, and process improvement specialists aiming to apply Lean and Kaizen methods in daily work.

• Healthcare executives working to align improvement efforts with strategic goals for quality, safety, and efficiency.

• Students and early-career professionals in healthcare administration or management who want real-world, transferable skills.

This course may not be the right fit if you are:

• Looking for purely theoretical discussions of Lean without practical application.

• Expecting a one-time “quick fix” rather than building an ongoing improvement culture.

• Unwilling to involve front-line staff or encourage participation in problem-solving.

• Seeking content focused solely on manufacturing or non-healthcare industries.

• Hoping for pre-made solutions instead of learning how to develop your own.

Kaizen is about learning by doing—this course works best for those ready to apply the ideas in real-world healthcare settings.

Join Mark Graban and learn how to make small changes every day that add up to big, lasting results—for your patients, your team, and your organization.