This is an example of a line graph of seven geographically competing hospitals showing several patient safety aggregates and some PSI individual metrics over twenty quarters.

This example shows tables for several aggregate metrics and two individual metrics over an eight quarter period. Twenty medical facilities in the Seattle area are included but only those reporting sufficient data will appear in a given table.

This document contains the product description for TOPS and how it might be inexpensively implemented on top of an existing EMR system,. This patented technology is designed to ensure patient safety, increase the efficiency of healthcare workers and dramatically reduce the cost of healthcare. Hospitals will benefit from greater efficiency and treatment capacity.

This research note explores ways of anticipating and/or quickly identifying failure points in the treatment delivery process under normal circumstances and when the process is under extreme pressure. These failures would be anything that would prevent the treatment delivery process from being executed as planned including supply failures or various types of personnel failures.

This paper describes how to effectively use alerts in a patient treatment management system. It also debunks the notion that you can build a patient treatment management system that does not use alerts. The described approach will eliminate alert fatigue and facilitate dramatic quality increases in treatment delivery reducing mortality and readmission rates.

Given the current critical importance of "flattening the curve", it should also be apparent that we need to look at cost efficient ways to increase the treatment capacity of the health-care system. This research paper looks at a method for doing just that without building new hospitals.

This document explains why the Ashbec Hospital Patient Safety Rating system was created, the source of the data used in the rating system and the algorithm employed to calculate the safety ratings.

This report explains why EMR systems and the “Big Data” phenomenon will not have a major impact on reducing medical error, mortality rates or readmission rates. It will describe an approach that uses these tools effectively which should allow hospitals to improve the quality of treatment delivery and increase market share.

In 1998 the Institute of Medicine started the ball rolling by estimating that between 44,000 and 98,000 Americans were dying annually as a result of preventable medical error. In September 2013, Dr. John James in The Journal of Patient Safety published that an estimated 440,000 lives would be lost prematurely each year due to preventable medical error. That is more lives than the US military lost in all of World War II. A recent analysis by Johns Hopkins of the same data using more conservative assumptions resulted in an estimate of 250,000 American lives, which still makes medical error the third leading cause of death in the United States. However, as some have theorized, this number cannot be reduced by “Big Data” alone. Information by itself will simply change what a healthcare worker knows. It will not change what a healthcare worker does.

As many analysts have pointed out, the healthcare reform legislation passed by Congress in 2010 does very little to reduce healthcare costs. The largest glimmer of hope surrounds the funding of comparative effectiveness research. In concept, this research should allow the identification of the most cost effective treatments and a resulting reduction in health care costs. This analysis document points out problems in the healthcare delivery system and the shortcomings of existing EMR systems that will prevent any major improvements in our ability to study the comparative effectiveness of multiple treatments.

This short review of The Checklist Manifesto by Dr. Atul Gawande explains why we feel his work will have a major impact on the healthcare industry. In a given facility, we expect the implementation of checklists to have a greater impact than the implementation of an EMR. The review goes on to explain how experience using checklists will prepare a hospital for the implementation of the more complete solution in Treatment Optimization for Patient Safety (TOPS)^®.

Effective Strategy Execution provides a framework for managing a learning organization. It is intended to be customized for each specific organization. The framework helps clients integrate the use of a number of business transformation techniques including cultural change management, performance measurement, lean manufacturing, Six Sigma, balanced scorecard, activity based costing, process re-engineering, process automation and more. Clients that successfully implement ESE will have an organization where the workers ensure that organizational performance continually improves and a less stressful work environment is still maintained. This paper provides an overview of the framework and touches on some implementation issues.

This research note looks at the changing impact of systematic, incremental change versus innovative change. While the impact of innovative change is more fleeting than previously, competitive advantages gained can be extended by using the continuous improvement techniques of learning organizations. (These techniques are very similar to the kaizen practices in lean manufacturing.) We look at how the two approaches are related and how they should be coordinated and balanced through a standardized and disciplined management practice.

Does being a learning organization put the "effective" into the name Effective Strategy Execution^®? Not necessarily... Can a strategy be executed effectively by an organization that is not a learning organization? Definitely not. Learn why in this research note that looks at the relationship between strategy execution and learning organizations.

Dr. Liker has produced an interesting piece of work with many strengths and a few weaknesses. The book also allows the reader to gain some interesting insights into Toyota that may not have been intended. See the full review for more information.