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IHI: Time to Get Serious About Healthcare Quality, Costs
Keynote speakers at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement's national conference urged healthcare leaders to crack the code on raising healthcare quality and reducing costs. Don Berwick, MD, did not mince words about where he thinks many of the improvements should come from.
According to Press Ganey, ED Length of Stay is four hours, unchanged for a decade. In 1999, To Err is Human alarmed the public with 99,000 preventable deaths a year. Now that we are better at tracking, we know the number is more like 400,000 per year. The IOS says there's $750 Billion in preventable expense every year. And the Wall Street Journal says if we could eliminate that cost it would cut the U.S. deficit in half. In general, Health Care has been admiring the problem of sluggish, error-prone patient care hoping it will go away. It has not. Aggressive application of the Magnificient Seven Tools of Lean Six Sigma would move most healthcare organizations from 3-to-5 sigma in 18-24 months.