Healthcare may have more to gain from continuous improvement than any other industry. Liz and Marco talk with Dr. Sonia Millan, a board-certified sports medicine and lifestyle medicine physician and Lean Six Sigma Green Belt, about bringing lean thinking into medicine.

Sonia shares how she fixed clinic flow so a case got touched twice instead of six times, why clinicians resist change (“humans are not widgets”), and how cutting burnout and turnover brings back joy in patient care. She also covers AI in utilization management, her Green Belt projects, and her best advice for getting started: Ask your staff.

Connect with Sonia on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/soniamillanp/

Episode chapters

• 00:45 – Introduction: Dr. Sonia Millan
• 01:28 – Welcome, and how Sonia found a lean mindset
• 04:15 – Keeping a practice lean: Supplies, inventory and waste
• 05:31 – First pain point: Clinic flow and respecting patients’ time
• 07:39 – Callbacks and the case touched six times
• 09:48 – Resistance to change and the “art of medicine”
• 12:59 – Engineering, product development and creativity
• 16:32 – Protecting the patient or protecting autonomy?
• 19:53 – Burnout, staff turnover and early wins
• 24:04 – AI note-taking and record summaries
• 25:39 – Utilization management and Green Belt projects
• 29:35 – Where to start: Ask your staff
• 32:27 – Field trip to the “leanest dentist in Jacksonville”
• 34:44 – Lean in health systems: Small wins add up
• 35:41 – Where to find Sonia, and wrap-up

Listen to the episode: Humans Aren’t Widgets: Bringing Lean Six Sigma to Medicine with Dr. Sonia Millan on Libsyn

Want help applying these ideas in your organization? Contact Work Stream Consulting.