ABSTRACT
One can begin the story of an organization’s ‘journey to quality’ almost anywhere. This particular story begins with the appointment of Blair L Sadler to the post of president and chief executive at San Diego Children’s Hospital (see Box 2.1) in 1980 and ends in 2002 when the hospital received the prestigious Ernest A Codman Award in recognition of its achievements in healthcare quality outcomes. This national Joint Commission award recognizes ‘exemplary performance’, and the hospital (which we shall refer to as ‘Children’s’) was the fi rst children’s hospital in the US ever to receive it. Sadler himself has described the fi rst half of this period as ‘a decade of surviving’, and the second as a ‘decade of thriving’.
