We have been working with Senator Kohl to introduce this amendment for some weeks now. It is great to be able to announce that he has done so. It is imperative for us to gather data on methods of improvement that are working in U.S. healthcare and we know applying lean to healthcare is one […]
I participated in a roundtable of distinguished health care experts convened by The Institute of Medicine to discuss cutting the health care bill in America by 10% or over 400 billion dollars by 2018. Read on to see what we discussed and concluded. Harvard researchers, employee benefits administrators, physicians, health plan executives, and improvement experts […]
This is a terrific presentation by front line nurse Jamie Guth who works on the Collaborative Care Unit at ThedaCare. ThedaCare and Collaborative Care was one of three organizations chosen by the Commonwealth Fund as best practice in North America for innovation related to multidisciplinary team development. Thirty-one organizations were initially screened with three chosen. […]
In his plenary speech yesterday in Orlando, Don Berwick the CEO of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement recognized eight organizations as delivering remarkably better performance. Four of them are members of the Healthcare Value Leaders Network. Cedar Rapids was identified as major example of a community where low cost high quality care was being delivered. […]
This article points out the seven issues to watch in the ensuing health debate.The issues are: public option,abortion,health insurance excise tax,prescription drugs,affordability,insurance exchanges,and Medicare cuts. Isn’t it interesting that removing waste from the care delivery system isn’t mentioned any where. I assume that by cutting Medicare spending by several hundred billion dollars that legislators are […]
The following article clearly expresses what we have been espousing for months: without focus on care delivery reform costs will go up,regulation will increase, and innovation at the level of care provision will be stymied. Dr. Flier explains what is really happening in Massachusetts which is that costs are rapidly rising to the point that the […]
Group Health has made terrific strides in their quest to build a culture of continuous improvement using lean. The HCVLN met in Seattle on Nov. 5th and 6th and visited Group Health of Puget Sound. What a great experience seeing the progress Group Health has made in their Lean implementation. We visited sites where executives and managers had standard […]
The op-ed describes another hospital’s journey in using The Toyota Production System to radically redesign and improve care. Just think what we could accomplish if we could get the entire industry to change in this way. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/08/AR2009100802594.html
It’s been a while since I have written on this blog because we have been waiting for the democrats to sort out their differences. The passage of the Senate finance health bill is the first step in convergence on what we can expect to see from health legislation. What do we need to prepare for? […]
Please read the Baucus Bill – Health Care Reform Mark Document FINAL There are so many new federal agencies it’s hard to remember them from day. The CMS innovation center is one of the new agencies. Whether CMS and innovation constitute an oxymoron is debatable but how can innovation ever be managed in a central agency at the […]
