Book excerpt: PROVEN STRATEGIES FOR REVOLUTIONIZING HEALTHCARE SYSTEMS "If I had to sum up this book in one word, the word would be 'brilliant'! This is one of the most insightful books on TOC, not just for healthcare, that I have ever read." --BOB SPROULL, author of The Ultimate Improvement Cycle: Maximizing Profits through the Integration of Lean, Six Sigma, and the Theory of Constraints Performance Improvement for Healthcare: Leading Change with Lean, Six Sigma, and Constraints Management lays out an integrated approach for using three industrially based methods to transform hospital operations in terms of patient outcomes and experience, financial viability, and employee satisfaction. This pioneering guide presents a scalable strategy for managing bottlenecks, eliminating waste, reducing errors, and containing costs in healthcare organizations, as well as sustaining the gains achieved. Real-world case studies illustrate successful performance improvement implementations that have realized breakthrough operational and financial results. COVERAGE INCLUDES: Constraints Management applications in healthcare The NOVACES SystemCPI--an integrated performance improvement deployment approach Three-part assessment--strategic gap analysis, system-level value stream analysis, and system constraint analysis Planning a performance improvement program deployment to ensure timely and consistent execution Applying the right tool to the right problem from a system perspective Sustaining gains achieved by the performance improvement team Defining a path to self-sufficiency