Setting Audacious Goals

Hello young improvers!

I'm a long time reader but first time poster to the blog. I came across a great article in this morning's New York Times Op-Ed section that I thought many of us would be interested in. It's a piece written by Paul O'Neill, the former Treasury Secretary turned health care improvement crusader.

In his piece today, O'Neill writes about how, thus far, the goals Washington has set for health care reform have not been "audacious" enough. He states that there is about $1 trillion of annual waste in the health care system and that's what we need to tackle, not the miniscule cost inflation reductions that Obama has wrangled out of the insurance companies. He offers that one great place to start is nosocomial infection reduction, and he points to some star health care improvement leaders -- Gary Kaplan, Brent James, Rick Shannon -- to give us shining examples of what's possible.

Best of all, O'Neill says that the system needs more improvement-minded leaders. That's us guys!

Hope you can check out the article. It's a good read.

- Alexi (Yale Med 2010)