APM Marketplace (Business/Economy radio)
As you've read here, I'm trying to help get the word out that we should be not just focusing on access to care, but also focusing on quality of care — preventable medical mistakes. I think it's much more realistic to solve the medical mistakes problem, with Lean, than it is to solve the access problem.
I submitted a blurb to the “rants” section of the Marketplace website and they printed it (without name, but I'm sure you'll believe it's me).
The webpage changes every day, so here's the text of it:
[Michael] Moore cites statistics that say 18,000 Americans a year die because they lack access to good healthcare. That's a tragedy. The bigger killer that's being ignored by Moore and the media are the patients who are killed when they do have access. The Institute of Medicine estimates that 98,000 Americans per year die because of preventable medical errors — wrong drugs given, hospital acquired infections, errors in surgery, etc. This problem does not go away even with universal coverage. Canada has a per-capital error rate that's as bad (if not slightly worse) than the U.S. The UK has major medical error problems as well. So, it's not the payment system that's the factor there. These are problems that hospitals are struggling with worldwide.
I'm also going to try submitting a 400 word essay on the topic to try to help get more exposure for the issue and the role Lean can play.
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Mark's new book is The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation.
He is also the author of Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More, the Shingo Award-winning books Lean Hospitals and Healthcare Kaizen, and the anthology Practicing Lean.
Mark is also a Senior Advisor to the technology company KaiNexus.