Earlier this month, the Cleveland Clinic hosted our first Continuous Improvement in Healthcare conference.  What fun we had while learning.   We were very pleased with the results for a first year conference, and have many people to thank for our success.

There are many components that need to come together for a conference to succeed.  The speakers of course make a huge difference.  Ours were some of the best…John Shook, Dr. Patricia Gabow and Alice Lee, along with our own Dr. Lisa Yerian and Darryl Greene.

John Shook

Dr. Patricia Gabow

Alice Lee

Darryl Greene and Dr. Lisa Yerian

Breakout presentations are also important.  Again, we had many high quality presenters representing Denver Health, Henry Ford Health System, Christie Clinic, Parkview Health and Akron Children’s Hospital, not to mention the 9 presentations from Cleveland Clinic personnel.  Thanks to all of our breakout session presenters for sharing your time and your experiences.

Cleveland Clinic Experience

Distribution Center tunnel

Our Gemba day worked just as planned when we hosted over 50 people at 6 different sites and allowed participants the opportunity to choose which 3 of the 6 locations they wanted to visit.  Using a hub and spoke process, we effectively sent people out to the Gemba, brought them back to a central location, shuffled and then sent them out to their next location.

Gemba central

Emergency Department

All of the success couldn’t have occurred without the support of our sponsors and exhibitors.  Their participation and their financial support enabled us to offer the conference at an affordable price for participants and for us to break even financially.

Key sponsors for the event who provided educational grants were:

Amgen

and

 AbbVie  (Abbott Proprietary Pharmaceutical Division).

Our exhibitors provided interesting and valuable information for our participants.

A special thank-you is necessary for GBMP (Greater Boston Manufacturing Partnership).  They were the first to step up to be an exhibitor and without their initial commitment to our conference, we may not have been able to move forward.  So a big thank you to my friends Bruce Hamilton and Pat Wardwell and the rest of the GBMP team for your support.

The “Old Lean Dude” made an appearance.

Additional exhibitors included:  Corporate College (a division of Cuyahoga Community College),  Explorys,  Simpler Consulting, Cardinal Health, LEI (Lean Enterprise Institute), ASQ’s Lean Enterprise Division and the AME/ASQ/Shingo Prize/SME Lean Certification program, John Carroll University and IntelligentInsites.

Thanks to all of our sponsors and exhibitors who helped make our initial conference a huge success!

Corporate College

Explorys

Simpler Consulting

Cardinal Health

Lean Enterprise Institute

ASQ’s Lean Enterprise Division and the AME / ASQ / Shingo Prize / SME Lean Certification Program

Finally, a huge shout out to the conference planning committee for pulling it all together.  There were many lessons learned that we will implement as we start planning for next year’s conference.

We hope to see you there!