The nun and the bureaucrat

Savary, Louis M. and Clare Crawford-Mason

The Nun and the Bureacrat...reports the transformational changes of management and clinical care delivery achieved by two large hospital systems. The results were significant reductions in death and suffering, medication errors and hospital-acquired infections, waste, and expense and improvements in quality of care and working conditions for healthcare professionals. Forty hospitals cooperating in the Pittsburgh Regional Healthcare Initiative and 20 hospitals of the SSM Health Care system in St. Louis adopted Toyota principles and related quality management ideas of W. Edwards Deming to practice continual improvement toward perfect patient care.