ABSTRACT
Health care and the problems it presents to anyone seeking to improve it invites understanding and study. This chapter shows that discerning the difference between simple, complicated and complex aspects of challenges is a useful construct for practicing physicians and leaders of health-care systems in the design of improvement interventions. The triangle allows the balanced, multifaceted approach to improving complex problems in health-care institutions. The overall goal for improvement work should be to increase the reliability and standardization of simple and complicated problems so that providers can have increased autonomy and resilience in dealing with complex problems. Understanding the type of problem or clinical scenario at hand can help improve the design of associated improvement interventions. However, the context of implementation requires consideration, given that most clinical microsystems where the electronic health record will be used are complex adaptive systems.
