Lean in Mental Healthcare with Sunil Khushalani, MD and Antonio DePaolo, PhD

Lean Blog Interviews - Healthcare, Manufacturing, Business, and Leadership

Show notes: https://www.leanblog.org/435

My guests for Episode #435 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast are Sunil Khushalani, MD, a psychiatrist who specializes in Addiction Psychiatry and Antonio DePaolo, PhD, a transformation executive and a Baldrige Fellow with over 22 years of experience in improvement science.

My guests today are the co-authors of the new book, released in December, titled Transforming Mental Healthcare: Applying Performance Improvement Methods to Mental Healthcare.

You can order the book through the publisher at a 20% discount, using code ESBAC.

They are a physician (psychiatrist more specifically) and an industrial engineer:

• Sunil Khushalani, MD, a psychiatrist who specializes in Addiction Psychiatry
• Antonio DePaolo, PhD, a transformation executive and a Baldrige Fellow with over 22 years of experience in improvement science.

Today, we discuss topics and questions including:

• I'm always fascinated to hear your ‘lean origin stories” if you will
• Antonio? 16 years in manufacturing, Lean and Six Sigma, GM/Delphi, Sensei Nakao from Shingujitsu
• Suni? At Shepard Pratt – Chip Davis, patient safety course, Steve Spear “Fixing Healthcare“, the “Pittsburgh Way” book, “Perfecting Patient Care” with Spear and Paul O'Neill
• Antonio coming into healthcare? Via Stiles Associates (our sponsor)
• Experts in behavior — lessons in behavioral health?
• Ron Oslin webinar on Motivational Interviewing (still trying to find the new location on lean.org)
• “Addicted to the status quo” — How does this idea apply to leaders?
• “A conservative 30-50% of every step in the mental healthcare process does not help patients feel better or stay better”??
• Motivations for Lean then and there?
• Sunil: hearing about quality & safety problems?

• How did you approach transformation / Lean in the Mental Healthcare setting?
• 1 in 5 Americans experience a “mental illness” each year — which is most common? How many people don't get access to the right treatment?
• When should people reach out for mental health care?
• How do you define Lean Daily Management?
• Burnout amongst healthcare workers?
• Sunil – tell us more about the natural reaction to being told?
• Don't blame people for being resistant to change
• Pitfalls / lessons learned??

The podcast is sponsored by Stiles Associates, now in their 30th year of business. They are the go-to Lean recruiting firm serving the manufacturing, private equity, and healthcare industries. Learn more.

This podcast is part of the #LeanCommunicators network.