ABSTRACT
Patient safety problems, extended wait times, and steeply rising costs are more typical scenarios for many healthcare consumers. This article offers accounts of collaborative improvement initiatives. The remedy for healthcare’s ills is well-known to manufacturing types who set their sights on world-class performance: a consistent, organization-wide focus on quality, complemented by teamwork, standardized performance criteria, information transparency, and perhaps most challenging of all, cultural change. The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), joining with other health-care organizations, launched a “100k Lives Campaign,” aiming to enlist participation by thousands of hospitals across the United States. The campaign to make healthcare more safe and effective, achieving the best possible outcomes for all patients, is among various IHI healthcare improvement initiatives. The quest for healthcare improvement through collaborative efforts is gaining momentum in many areas and organizations. One of the challenges confronting healthcare improvement practitioners is the belief that lean means skimpy services. Or that computerizing and automating processes will solve problems.
