Thomas G. Zidel, MBA
President, Lean Hospitals, LLC
Tom Zidel is president of Lean Hospitals, a consulting company which provides consulting, facilitation and training to healthcare organizations. With more than 25 years of experience in Lean and Six Sigma implementation, Tom has guided many organizations on their Lean journey. He has dedicated the last 12 years to working exclusively with healthcare organizations and is the author of the best selling book “A Lean Guide to Transforming Healthcare, How to Implement Lean Principles in Hospitals, Medical Offices, Clinics and Other Healthcare Organizations”. Tom has earned the prestigious Shingo Research and Professional Publication Award for his book Lean Done Right: Achieve and Maintain Reform in Your Healthcare Organization, which was also a 2012 Axiom Business Book Awards silver medal winner, in the category of operations management. In “Lean Done Right” he explains the two paths of lean implementation necessary to create a truly lean enterprise.
Tom has trained and/or mentored hundreds of healthcare professionals from many of our nation's leading hospitals, including Yale New-Haven Health System, Johns Hopkins Hospital and Aurora Health Care, in the use of Lean and DMAIC methods
Tom Zidel is a pioneer in Lean implementation in healthcare. His presentations and workshops are stimulating, energetic and functional. His unique approach to Lean implementation allows organizations to sustain their lean initiative by creating a Lean culture and developing in-house experts in both lean and Six Sigma. Tom's passion for Lean is contagious. His presentations provide insight into the need for Lean implementation in healthcare. His goal is to create a Lean culture and systems thinking in healthcare organizations so they can sustain the Lean initiative independently without the need for outside support.
Danielle Lavallee, PharmD, PhD
Senior Healthcare Consultant, Lean and Six Sigma
Danielle is a consultant and facilitator for Lean Hospitals, a consulting company that works exclusively with healthcare organizations. She has a wide range of project experience implementing both lean and six sigma principles. Danielle provides a level of expertise and experience that many organizations cannot support on an on-going basis. She is committed to providing healthcare organizations with the specific knowledge that allows them to successfully implement lean and six sigma methodologies to reduce costs, enhance revenue, and increase productivity.
Danielle was previously the Director of the Center for Medication Use and Outcomes Research at the University of Maryland Medical Center. Her work and research focuses on improving the efficiency of healthcare practices through the incorporation of lean principles. Her current research and practice is focused on pharmaceutical/health outcomes research and improving medication management services. She has extensive experience in the collection and analyses of data from surveys and clinical data sets.
Danielle holds a Doctor of Pharmacy from the University of Kansas and earned her Doctor of Philosophy from Department of Pharmaceutical Health Services Research at the University of Maryland, School of Pharmacy, and is a Lean Hospitals Certified Six Sigma Black Belt.
Sam Hoskins, MA
Senior Consultant, Mistake Proofing
Sam has been a Productivity, Inc.-certified Mistake-Proofing trainer for over 11 years and has facilitated dozens of successful Lean and Mistake-Proofing events.
His wide-ranging career includes large plant maintenance for Underwriters Laboratories, and he was a Senior Customer Engineer for IBM. In addition, he was on faculty as an aviation technology instructor at Southern Illinois University.
Sam has extensive hands-on safety and manufacturing experience, spending nine years as a manufacturing quality engineer and most recently as Quality Manager for Dyno Nobel, an international explosives company. His projects included ergonomic and safety improvements to the workplace, machine reliability, various cost reductions, and of course, designing Mistake-Proofing devices, facilitating and training. Sam holds degrees in aviation maintenance, engineering, and an M.S. in Manufacturing Systems from Southern Illinois University and is an ASQ Certified Six Sigma Black Belt.
|