The United States falls far short of its potential for delivering care that is effective, efficient, safe, timely, patient-centered, and equitable. We put forward the Better Care Plan, an overarching blueprint to address the flaws in our current system. The plan calls for continuously improving care, moving all payers to risk-adjusted prospective payment, and creating […]
In the 21 years since the National Academy of Medicine published To Err is Human, there has been significant effort to improve safety and reduce the variation in health outcomes in the United States. Still, an estimated 1.2 million are harmed each year by medical errors made in U.S. hospitals. We outline below necessary steps to change this. […]
For now, it’s COVID of course. Hospitals are overflowing with sick patients, mostly unvaccinated. Outpatient departments are closed, and staff are reassigned to fight the latest variant, Omicron. The burden on healthcare workers is big and could have been avoided, which makes many sad, frustrated, and downright angry. So, hats off to everyone doing the […]
John Toussaint, MD, recently published an article in the American Association for Physician Leadership’s Physician Leadership Journal. In this article, he discusses how observational databases such as Cosmos can increase the pace with which we gain knowledge about certain aspects of patient populations. Download Article
What comes first technology or process? As lean thinkers we know it’s always the process first. Healthcare is not wanting for technology. We’ve spent the last ten years implementing electronic health records, replacing legacy financial systems, and building information flow systems that allow caregivers to have access to real-time data at the point of care. […]
The conversion of paper medical charts to digital has been a massive effort over the past 10 to 15 years. The energy has led to the creation of an integrated patient record with every bit of information needed to provide diagnosis treatment and prevention while allowing full access of information to the patient. In this […]
I was talking to a colleague this week who is the lean transformation leader at a large multispecialty physician group in California. He has a great deal of lean transformation experience. He asked me, “So what’s next? We have taken the transformation journey as outlined by Catalysis and we want to know what’s next.” It […]
I have had to answer many people during my career why I should espouse this management philosophy that is so hard to learn. The reason is simple; it saves lives. This has never been more clearly demonstrated than the work we witnessed in Westrand and Johannesburg, South Africa. The results CEOs Gladys Bogoshi and Grey […]
Why don’t more leaders embrace the organizational excellence transformation journey? We still live in a fee-for-service environment and there is little incentive for leaders to change their strategy. Team based care is critical to designing care models around patients but team based care is discouraged in the present insurance environment as well. In this latest […]
Over the years I have often been asked what I would do differently if I were to lead another lean transformation. The list is too long to cover in this monthly letter, but I would like to highlight two important learnings that would shape the transformation differently. View this message on Youtube. I would be […]
