The patient is at the heart of everything we do.

Since 1995, JBA has worked together with our clients to transform the patient experience.
Pioneer in Lean healthcare since 1995

JBA is North America's premier provider of Lean healthcare transformation. JBA has a proven track record of implementing Lean in healthcare for more than 20 years. 

Today’s healthcare systems are challenged to deliver better, more compassionate care, more efficiently than ever, under difficult conditions. To help meet these challenges, John Black and Associates (JBA) leads organizations through a process of transformational change. This process is based on the methods and principles of the Toyota Production System. 

JBA (and its forerunner, Poggetti and Associates) first began applying the Toyota Production System (TPS) to healthcare in 1995 in a seminal implementation of Lean at PeaceHealth in the Pacific Northwest. This effort began with a CEO study mission to Japan — most likely the first ever undertaken by a healthcare CEO — and included training by Lean trailblazers ranging from MIT’s James Womack and Wiremold’s Art Byrne to Shingijutsu Consulting senseis who had learned directly from Taichii Ohno.

Embarking on a Lean journey long before Lean became a topic in healthcare, PeaceHealth achieved phenomenal results over the next two years. In just one rapid process improvement workshop, for instance, PeaceHealth streamlined home health visits and increased capacity while saving more than 15,000 staff hours, cutting administrative space requirements by 74 percent, and removing more than $640,000 from the annual budget.  
JBA can help you deliver:

• Higher-quality care 
• Compassionate service 
• Greater reliability 
• Improved patient access
• At a lower cost

Leading transformation at Virginia Mason

In 2001, Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle, Washington, became one of the first hospitals to transform its entire management system using the Toyota Production System. Building on the pioneering work with PeaceHealth, JBA helped Virginia Mason turn an ailing healthcare system into one of the top hospitals in the world. Quality of patient care, safety, cost efficiency, and staff morale were all significantly improved. 

As a result, during the recession from 2007 to  2008, many hospitals shut down services and cut back on staffing while Virginia Mason prospered. In 2010, nine years after its adoption of Lean, Virginia Mason was awarded Hospital of the Decade by the Leapfrog Group. By then, the world had begun to take notice, and other healthcare leaders have begun to adopt Lean and the Toyota Production System. 
Guiding a host of recognized Lean 
healthcare leaders

Since its work with Virginia Mason, JBA has advised key leading healthcare organizations in how to best transform their management systems to achieve truly astounding results. In 2011, the Canadian province of Saskatchewan began a massive Lean healthcare journey with JBA. This effort, involving more than 40,000 healthcare workers in hundreds of facilities and offices province-wide, represents the largest healthcare transformation so far in the world. After several years of intense implementation and hundreds of Lean events, the province's Ministry of Health has announced:

  • Significant reductions in surgery wait times.
  • Shorter wait times for other services.
  • Fewer medical errors.
  • Dramatic cost savings.

JBA has helped set Saskatchewan on the path to healthcare transformation. Now, JBA's Lean experts are ready to help your organization achieve equally impressive results.
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©2015 John Black and Associates