Innovative health care organizations around the country have formulated breakthrough solutions to some of the toughest and most expensive challenges in health care. This book identifies these innovations, describes and defines them, and prescribes a model for their spread.[...]
For decades, the manufacturing industry has employed the Toyota Production System - the most powerful production method in the world - to reduce waste, improve quality, reduce defects and increase worker productivity. In 2001, Virginia Mason Medical Center, an integrated healthcare delivery system i[...]
In the late 1990s, treatment-related deaths or "complications" were the fifth leading cause of death for Americans. Spurred by the crisis, a group of dedicated physicians like Paul Batalden and Don Berwick made it their goal to study the concepts of "quality improvement" used at Toyota and NASA, and[...]