Preparing for Continuous Quality Improvement for Healthcare

Preparing for Continuous Quality Improvement in Healthcare is a fascinating, yet practical, approach to sustainable change for human service systems and institutions. It simply and comprehensively maps out a step-by-step approach to programmatic and structural change that regular people can understand and apply. Reza Ziaee is a master at his craft and teaches us all that systematic change can be pretty basic. I wish I had his book in my back pocket when I was the state director of Michigan's Department of Human Services. —Ismael Ahmed, Senior Adviser to the Chancellor, and Associate Provost of Metropolitan Impact, University of Michigan, Dearborn The United States Healthcare delivery system is frequently incomprehensible and expensive - just try to find out what the cost of your proposed care will be ahead of time. With a succession of changes in reimbursement methods, healthcare has been in a chaotic transition. The provision of care is not driven by patient centered needs and is highly unfair and fundamentally flawed due in large part to the philosophy that a market based solution can work. Unfortunately, market based solutions have not precipitated a significant improvement in care and have clearly failed to meet the needs of most Americans. So what is a healthcare leader to do in this chaotic mess? For the last three decades, we have all experienced the costly and impressive ‘consultants’ who have promised programs (process improvement, TQM, CQI, Six Sigma, Lean, Optimization and many others) but have not produced long-term solutions or benefits and worse yet they have not provided a clear path for management to follow. Reza Ziaee, PhD and James Bologna, in their highly readable and insightful book Preparing for Continuous Quality Improvement in Healthcare, present a comprehensive approach to understanding and controlling the myriad of processes in a healthcare organization. Ziaee and Bologna analyze our current healthcare situation, identify its many failings, and then introduce the concept of Functional Tree Structures, which is a robust tool for process understanding and improvement. This book explains the concepts of stabilizing, optimizing, and aligning processes and gives examples how to follow a more structured program that leads to sustainable improvements. In Preparing for Continuous Quality Improvement in Healthcare Ziaee and Bologna give us a comprehensive and evidence based method for actually making system wide changes. And if we have the courage to embrace this straightforward method with enlightened leadership, it will result in the best healthcare system possible. —Dr. Frank Balestrieri, Anesthesiologist, Banner Medical Group Performance improvement is a critical component to the health and well being of healthcare organizations today. As decreased reimbursement pressures continue to deplete operating profits, organizations must find other ways of managing costs rather than the old method of just reducing staff. Many have already reaped the benefits from the ‘low hanging fruit’ initiatives. The authors of this book have put together an easily read and understandable roadmap to help any organization improve their operating efficiencies. I highly recommend this book and the methods described within. —Mark S. Johnson MA, CPA, FACHE, COO/CFO, Norwood Hospital, Norwood, Massachusetts Preparing for Continuous Quality Improvement in Healthcare offers an illuminating perspective on building a sustainable environment of quality improvement in healthcare. This is not another ‘project of the day’ methodology, but a full model that will leave you with a better health care environment – better outcomes, better care and lower cost. —Deborah Dahl, Vice President, Patient Care Innovation, Banner Health Reza and James touch on very powerful concepts which allow for the visualization of an organization through Functional Tree Structures (FTS). It provides an elegant contextual understanding of the detailed attributes of an organization and provides leadership with compelling logic for change. FTS also delivers clarity in understanding where improvement will help the organization through a unified understanding of the interrelated functions. FTS provides the platform for lasting change and ongoing viability. Given the immense complexity inherent in the provision of health services, performance improvement using traditional approaches has not consistently provided consistent ROIs. Many organizations risk demise unless they can manage the task of implementing meaningful, and repeatable, process improvements at a faster pace. I believe that FTS provides a powerful catalyst for performance improvement and ongoing measurement. Following the tools and concepts presented in this book, organizations have greater assurance that goals are met and performance improvement gains are held. Finally, FTS can be used across the entire organization to assess whether the strategic goals and objectives have been met or sustained. —Shane Wolverton, Senior Vice President, Comparion Medical Analytics