Critically Ill: A 5-Point Plan to Cure care Delivery

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“Critically Ill provides caregivers the detailed strategy and tactics to save lives by making the right decisions on the front lines.”—Jim Champy, New York Times Bestselling Author of Reengineering the Corporation and Reengineering Care “ care as never before requires adaptive leaders, that is, leaders willing to bring about true change. As Switzerland’s Secretary of I personally experienced the stresses associated with leading change. Critically Ill summarizes the key tenets of effective care leadership, and will guide all leaders who aspire to transform how we care for patients.”—Thomas Zeltner, M.D., Secretary of , Switzerland 1991–2009 “Academic medical centers are faced with many complex and interdependent system problems that affect patient satisfaction and clinical outcomes. Curing our care delivery system requires both top-down and bottom-up change. Critically Ill describes, in a manner that combines personal experience with research findings, a personal toolkit that will allow caregivers to improve the quality and safety of their patients’ care.”—Dr. David S. Guzick, President, UF & Shands System Two decades ago Dr. Fred Southwick witnessed the near demise of his wife while she was being cared for in a prominent academic medical center. For 15 years he blamed the individual physicians who cared for Mary. However five years ago the doctor realized that encouraging individual physicians to try harder was not the solution. As he started searching for answers, Dr. Southwick learned that the outdated model of medical care in our country results in fragmented care, great inefficiency, and 44,000­–95,000 annual deaths due to preventable medical errors. Despite calls to action by the Institute of Medicine and many patient safety organizations, these statistics have persisted for over a decade. In Critically Ill, Mary’s dramatic care nightmare is used as a learning tool to reveal startling, dangerous flaws in our current system of medical care and present a detailed five point action plan to cure care delivery and bring about change.