Restructuring Health Care: The Patient-Focused Paradigm

Why has improving performance been such an intractable problem in health care insitutions? While higher costs of technology, increased regulation, defensive medical practice, and other mitigating factors are often blamed, none of these adequately explain the rapid and continuing rise in personnel costs or the underlying problems in the quality of service.J. Philip Lathrop offers in-depth advice for making the necessary shift from hierarchical, functional organization structures to taking a patient-focused approach to health care operations. In a clear and readable manner, the author describes the concepts of implementing restructuring efforts in practice and explains the theories on which these concepts are based. Drawing on his extensive experience in helping hospitals implement patient-focused care, he offers a wealth of examples drawn from practice, illustrative analogies from other industries, and numerous True Life Adventures'' to illustrate the actual challenges and development of organizations that have undertaken this restructuring.…