Transformational Change in Health Care Through Operational Excellence

Abstract

The USA has one of the most expensive health care delivery systems in the world. As a result, US hospitals are focusing on improving operational efficiency and safety in order to deliver higher value, in terms of outcomes, experiences, and costs. The kinds of change that are required are transformational in nature. Transformational change is a kind of continuous change that represents a fundamental shift in the priorities, strategies, and culture of an organization. Herein, we will review the concept of operational excellence as one management approach that has been used to achieve transformational change. Operational excellence is really about achieving process reliability through continuous process improvement, which translates to better outcomes, better experiences, and lower costs.

A Practical Guide to Performance Improvement: Change Acceleration Process and Techniques to Maintain Improvements

“…The difference between transitional change and transformational change is the ability of the leaders of the organization to set the tone and the expectations for their staff members. Transformational change involves a total re‐engineering of the way care is delivered, taking place over a longer period of time and effecting proactive and continuous change versus simply replacing an existing process and effecting incremental change …”