Scripting a holistic Rx for process improvement at Palmetto Health imaging centers
Constrained by the technical nature of patient treatment, the special physician-patient relationship, and the general lack of broader perspectives of performance improvement, the health-care sector has generally lagged behind the manufacturing industry and other service sectors, such as banking, in the systematic application of process-improvement approaches. This article details a systemwide project to improve Palmetto Health Richland's network of imaging centers in the Columbia, South Carolina, metropolitan area. Begun as a narrowly focused, internal process-improvement project, it concluded with strategic decisions affecting the hospital's marketing and capacity management. The lessons from this case should alert hospital administrators and process-improvement specialists about the critical importance of identifying the correct goals and scope of a specific project; listening to the voice of the customer, the business, the process, and the resources; encouraging fact-based solutions through holistic and creative thinking; and using the right analytic tools to gauge and ensure real performance improvements. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Cottage industry to postindustrial care--the revolution in health care delivery.
U.S. health care is broken. Although other industries have transformed themselves using tools such as standardization of value-generating processes, performance measurement, and transparent reporting of quality, the application of these tools to health care is controversial, evoking fears of “cookbook medicine,” loss of professional autonomy, a misinformed focus on the wrong care, or a loss of individual attention and the personal touch in care delivery. We believe that public reporting of performance with regard to appropriately designed clinical standards can overcome these concerns. The application of improvement tools is not only essential to modernizing care delivery but also the key . . .
Human foot perspiration and upper leather
The suspicion, long entertained, that the grey or white deposit on a large amount of worn footwear, returned with complaint of “spewing salt” on the vamps, had its origin in the action of foot perspiration, has been confirmed during the last ten years.