Today I made a presentation on Pursuing Perfection to the Whatcom Coalition for Health Communites. It was well recieved. I made 3 key points:

1) It is about SYSTEMS, specifically Complex Adaptive Systems. This is the new paradigm. The essential shift in perspective from parts to connections, from mechanical systems to adaptive systems.

2) PATIENTS must be at the center, of everything. This is the key to the successful design of a system of care that works and that can be funded.

3) COOPERATION among clinicians (teams, leadership) is the real frontier. Healthcare cannot be improved in any substantial way until we develop competencies in cooperating on the patients behalf to build the systems they need.

I gave everyone Berwick's Users' Manual to the Chasm Report and Plesk's appendix on Complex Adaptive Systems. I talked from this graphic of our project.

There was much discussion of "social capital" or the lack there of. More later.

5:39:33 PM     comment []   Google It!