Katie Couric recently interviewed Dr. Donald Berwick on The Evening News and he explained the problems with hospitals and how to address them. Dr. Berwick heads the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) which seeks to bring systemic change to healthcare for the betterment of both patients and healthcare providers.
IHI sponsors learning protocols where groups of individuals and hospitals investigate specific medical issues, such as improving neo-natal care, and share what is learned. This approach expedites and promulgates learning.
This approach can be used in any endeavor. Tom Nolan, an associate of Dr. W. Edwards Deming, supports IHI and other enterprises by providing training and consulting in systemic improvement methods.
Dr.Nolan is an author and consultant who has helped countless people and organizations get better results, for themselves and their customers. He suggests that a cycle of learning starts by addressing 3 questions: 1) what are we trying to accomplish, 2) how will we know that a change is an improvement and 3) what changes can we test that we hope will lead to improvement. Subsequent steps in the learning cycle are to test out proposed change, compare what actually happens against what was predicted to happen and then taking appropriate action - adopting, rejecting, or modifying (and retesting) the proposed change.
Check out Katie Couric's interview with Dr. Berwick here .
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