Treating Patients AT LEAST as well as Cars on the Assembly Line

Don't miss this terrific interview with Dr. David Pate, CEO of St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital in Houston. He wants all the systems and physical arrangements of the hospital to be perfectly efficient so that physicians, nurses and all the hospital staff are freed to be human with the patient. Car manufacturers want those cars to come off the line in top condition--and that's how Dr. Pate wants you to leave his hospital.

Houston Chronicle: St. Luke's adopts business approach to efficiency, 2008-Apr-15, by Lynn Cook

No hospital in America is really efficient. That's why I brought in a consulting firm that doesn't specialize in health care, but they've all had experience with Toyota's lean system. Their expertise is really in aerospace, energy and technology. I got criticism for that from some of our staff. It's extremely complicated--medicine. But if we stand back and say health care's too complicated, we'll never get any improvements. They have come in with fresh eyes.