How do we get performance improvement in healthcare? Media attention has recently been focused on the publication of an Institute of Medicine (IOM) study which estimated that "44,000 to 98,000 Americans a year die from preventable mistakes–from drug mix-ups to inattentive treatment–made in hospitals by physicians, pharmacists, and other health care professionals".¹

It is easy to dig up sensational statistics about healthcare quality. It is harder to improve the healthcare system. It is very complex. In a factory, we deal with quality in materials. If we don't like what comes in the door, we send it back. Steel doesn't feel pain. Chips don't have distraught family members. We have a system where the patient, the family, the employer, the insurer(s), and the regulatory agencies all have a stake in the outcome.

Quality and performance in healthcare has received increased and systematic attention over the past decade, with good results. However there is still an annual $8.8 billion spent fixing medical mistakes.

So how do you go about improving healthcare? If you want to be pro-active, and improve your ability to track and reduce error rates, our PathMaker software can help. It's already helping quality directors and improvement teams in hundreds of hospitals in the USA. It helps you speed the process improvement cycle, by giving you and your teams all the essential quality improvement tools in one neat package. PathMaker allows you to effectively analyze root causes of problems and determine the best way to prevent them from occurring. In fact, there is no other software available today that offers so many tools to help you.

Find out how PathMaker can help you. Take a tour of the tools included. Or check out a selected list of PathMaker users in the health care industry. Even better, download a free 30 day trial and put PathMaker to work immediately. Included is a sample project pathway titled "Improve the Medication Administration Process" (sample1.pth).