Hospitals in pursuit of excellence

Transformational Journey: Leadership's Role in Change

As the conventional analogy notes, change occurs when an organization finds itself atop a burning platform and must choose to remain or jump. Faced with higher patient acuity, complex technology, increased specialization of services, and changing reimbursements, the hospital leadership acknowledged that it stood on a large burning platform. To fundamentally address the clinical and financial challenges, in 2014 leadership embarked on an organization-wide culture change, using the Toyota Production System (TPS) as the model for hospital transformation. While the TPS system aims to reduce waste, respect the worker, improve service, and reduce errors, the relentless goal is to deliver value to the customer patients. As a result, the hospital has successfully launched the first two pillars of a total quality management vision.