Book to Read: "The Healing of America"

Books – One Injury, 10 Countries – A Journey in Health Care – Review – NYTimes.com

I think this book,The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care, will go into the “to read” queue.

The first paragraph of the New York Times review sure resonated with me:

With all due respect to the seminar room, the boardroom, the hearing room and the Oval Office, a better vantage point than any of them for evaluating and redesigning our health care system is the hospital room (window bed, please).

We'll see if the book delivers on that promise — that we can redesign and improve care at the front lines of delivery, the “gemba,” if you will. Or, is the book just a rehashing of everything that people say is wrong with American health care?

The premise of the book is that the author has a shoulder problem, so he presents his condition and pain to physicians in ten different countries. The variation and lack of standardized work in the proposed countermeasures sounds fascinating. A lot of that variation seems driven by the incentives in each country's system.

Books I'm currently reading and need/want to finish soon. I'm enjoying them both very much.

• “Why Hospitals Should Fly“
• The Best Practice: How the New Quality Movement is Transforming Medicine

Have you read any of these?

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Mark Graban

Mark Graban is an internationally-recognized consultant, author, and professional speaker who has worked in healthcare, manufacturing, and startups. His latest book is Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More. He is author of the Shingo Award-winning books Lean Hospitals and Healthcare Kaizen, as well as The Executive Guide to Healthcare Kaizen. He also published the anthology Practicing Lean that benefits the Louise H. Batz Patient Safety Foundation, where Mark is a board member. Mark is also a Senior Advisor to the technology company KaiNexus.

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