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Product Description For decades, the manufacturing industry has employed the Toyota Production System ― the most powerful production method in the world ― to reduce waste, improve quality, reduce defects and increase worker productivity. In 2001, Virginia Mason Medical Center, an integrated healthcare delivery system in Seattle, Washington set out to achieve its compelling vision to become The Quality Leader and to fulfill that vision, adopted the Toyota Production System as its management method.Transforming Health Care: Virginia Mason Medical Center's Pursuit of the Perfect Patient Experience takes you on the journey of of Virginia Mason Medical Center's pursuit of the perfect patient experience through the application of lean principles, tools, and methodology. Over the last several years Virginia Mason has become internationally known for its journey towards perfection by applying the Toyota Production System to healthcare. The book takes readers step by step through Virginia Mason's journey as it seeks to provide perfection to its customer – the patient. This book shows you how you use this system to transform your own organization. Review If you work in the health and medical care field and you believe you and your institution are as good as it is possible to be, you should read this book. It will reset your standards and show you how to produce more value for your patients at a lower cost. This is a front line story, not a pie in the sky theory or project of the month. It is a story about real people dedicated to the pursuit of habitual excellence. ―Paul O’Neill, 72nd Secretary of the U.S. Treasury & former Chairman and CEO of Alcoa A comprehensive and insightful book that chronicles an arduous journey to achieve an exceptional patient-centered culture using a management system only now recognized as relevant to health care. This is a story of how Virginia Mason became the benchmark against which other health care systems must judge themselves, and a beacon in a field that has resisted change for far too long. ―David M. Lawrence, MD, MPH, Chairman and CEO (retired), Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Hospitals, Inc. The challenges to our U.S. health care system have never been greater. We are challenged by the high cost of care and less than optimal quality and safety. Virginia Mason Medical Center has been on a ten year journey to demonstrate just what is possible and the results have been profound. What is equally amazing, and must reading for health care leaders, is the story of their journey. It is possible to improve quality and safety while simultaneously reducing cost! ―John Kitzhaber, MD, Governor of Oregon 1995-2003 U.S. health care is replete with stories of failed attempts to improve quality and control soaring costs, only to succumb to perverse incentives, infighting and an entrenched status quo. Virginia Mason offers a different path forward, by showing what happens when all of health care’s stakeholders ― doctors, employers, insurers ― align themselves behind pursuing the best care for the patient. It’s a potential model precisely because its leadership medical staff had to overcome the same challenges that affect hospitals and clinicians across the country today. ―Vanessa Fuhrmans, The Wall Street Journal Congratulations to the Virginia Mason team for being another great example of committing to a compelling vision and to continuous quality improvement … . Thank You! ―Alan Mulally, former President and CEO, Boeing Commercial Airplanes; current President and CEO, Ford Motor Company Health care transformation is a process not an event. This book richly describes this process at Virginia Mason ― not just the principles but all the challenges along the way and how they were overcome. It is a textured account of an ongoing journey and as such is an invaluable aid to anyone serious about transforming their own organization. ―Richard Bohmer, MBChB, MPH Professor of Management Practice, Harvard Business Sc