Contents

Part I: Lean Healthcare Process
1. Discovering the Principles of Lean Healthcare
2. Focus on the Patient
3. Focus on the Value
4. Minimize Time
5. Continuous Improvement

Part II: Lean Healthcare People
6. Leadership in the Lean Environment
7. Engaging Doctors
8. Remodeling Behavior
9. Succession
10. Action Plan

Despite expensive increases in the cost of U.S. healthcare, Americans too often get mediocre results-or worse. National studies show that 15 million incidents of medical harm ? drug errors, wrong-side surgeries, infection-occur in the United States annually.

It is time to recognize that reducing errors and reducing cost at the same time requires a revolutionary new kind of healthcare delivery-lean healthcare, according to John Toussaint, MD, and Roger A. Gerard, PhD, authors of On the Mend: Revolutionizing Healthcare to Save Lives and Transform the Industry. Toussaint, CEO emeritus of ThedaCare, a four-hospital healthcare system in Wisconsin, and Gerard, its chief learning officer, candidly describe ThedaCares lean healthcare journey, an effort that slashed errors, improved patient outcomes, raised staff morale, and saved $27 million in costs without layoffs.

Part case study, part manifesto, this groundbreaking book uses plain language and real-life examples to explain lean healthcare-not as theory, but as a working system based on proven lean management principles adapted from industry and applicable by any healthcare provider.

While the external environment of healthcare-payment systems, insurance coverage, record-keeping, regulations-certainly needs to be overhauled, Toussaint and Gerard show clearly and cogently that only when healthcare is fundamentally improved at the point of delivery to patients will U.S. healthcare finally be on the mend.