Main description:

Engineering Solutions to America's Healthcare Challenges covers the technologies, systems, and processes that are emerging in hospitals, clinics, community centers, universities, and the White House to repair healthcare in the United States. Focusing on the importance of individuals being proactive about their own state of health, it presents a systems approach to changing the way healthcare professionals do business and take care of their patients.

Written by a leading government and private sector consultant with more than a decade of experience as an industrial engineer, the book features interviews with leading industry experts, both domestic and international. Describing how industrial engineering practices are shaping healthcare, it explains why systems thinking must be the foundation for every aspect of healthcare.

The book presents proven Lean and Six Sigma tools that can help any healthcare organization begin making operational improvements that result in a better quality of care for patients-all while reducing and even eliminating the waste of time, money, and human resources. These solutions include implementing Six Sigma in emergency rooms, 5S in accounting for medical inventory, using Theory of Constraints to form a plan for shortening the length of stay in hospitals, how informatics are used to aggregate and benchmark sensitive data, and design of experiments to recruit and retain the best healthcare talent.

The book illustrates the most common factors involved with successful Six Sigma projects in healthcare organizations and considers the implications of a rapidly growing medical tourism industry. It addresses the role of insurance on healthcare improvement and also previews some of the most fascinating technological advances currently in development. It also offers examples and analysis of The Institute of Medicine's six aims for healthcare: safety, effectiveness, efficiency, timeliness, family-centered focus, and equity.

Contents:

Prevention and Personal Accountability
Case Study in the Cost of Personal Choice
The Expert Is In: "The Number 1 Improvement: Teach Prevention and Wellness"
Critical Q&A

System Says
Following the Right Leader
When TOC Is Better Than TLC
Safety
Effectiveness
Efficiency
Timeliness
A Different Strain of Lean
Family-Centered Focus
Equity
Six Sigma
Six Sigma Cost Breakdown
Picture of Six Sigma Health
Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control
Design of Experiments
You've Paid for the Consultant, Now What?
Technology and People Behind the Methods
Critical Q&A

Care Ethics
The Language of Care
Critical Q&A

From the Exhibit Hall to Your Body
Dealing with All the Data
Critical Q&A

Trading Hotel Rooms for Sick Beds
Left out by Mainstream Media?
Opposing Views
Region Snapshot: Cuba
Critical Q&A

Insured or Imagined?
Medicaid and Medicare
How Engineers Can Help Patients
The Expert Is In
Critical Q&A

The Classroom: Where Medicine Begins
New Faces of Medical Education
Bench-to-Bedside Approach
Engineering Medicine
Exemplary Partnership
Put on Your Scrubs and Learn How to Communicate
Stress Nature over Pharma
Critical Q&A

Health Is the Law
Critical Q&A

Still in Development

Conclusion