Reference Point

A great article in the Sunday NY Times business section today. Seattle Children's Hospital is both improving patient care and lowering costs by involving its customers (patients' families) in extensive, ongoing process improvement efforts. The include 40 hour (!) workshops. 

In a typical workshop at Seattle Children’s, a group of doctors, nurses, administrators and representatives of patients’ families set aside a 40-hour week to work through C.P.I. methods. They plot each “event” a patient might encounter — like filling out forms, interacting with certain staff members, having to walk various distances or having to wait for assistance — and brainstorm about how each could be improved, or even eliminated.