From the Ground Up

"Everyone in a hospital leadership role should read this book as it offers a wealth of practical advice for organizations intent on improving their clinical care delivery."
--Amy C. Edmondson, professor, Harvard Business School, and author of The Fearless Organization

All Americans deserve and should have access to high quality, affordable healthcare services delivered by professionals who have sufficient time and resources to care for them. This book offers proven and practical approaches for redesigning healthcare organizations to be less fragmented--and more patient-centered--by tapping into the experiences of staff on the front lines of patient care.

Peter Lazes and Marie Rudden show how collaboration and active communication among administrators, medical staff, and patients are a core element of a successful organizational change effort. Through case studies and the direct voices and experiences of frontline workers, they explore exactly what it takes to effectively engage staff and providers in improving the patient care shortcomings within their institutions.

This book not only is a manual detailing what can be achieved when frontline staff have a direct voice in controlling their practice environments but was written to show how to accomplish transformative changes in how our hospitals and outpatient clinics work. At a time when the massive gaps in our healthcare systems have been laid bare by the fragmented responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, this book offers hope and a plan for change.

Peter Lazes, PhD, is the founder and former director of Programs for Employment and Workplace Systems and of the Healthcare Transformation Project, both at Cornell University. For over forty years, he has been dedicated to designing systems in which the knowledge and experience of frontline staff are used to improve patient care and to save the jobs of American workers.

Marie Rudden, MD, is a psychoanalyst and clinical assistant professor in psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medicine and an associate editor for the International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies. Rudden is also on the North American Editorial Board of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis and is a training and supervising analyst at the Berkshire Psychoanalytic Institute.