18 Levers for High-Impact Performance Improvement: How Healthcare Organizations Can Accelerate Change and Sustain Results

The revolutionary shift toward value-based reimbursement is compelling healthcare organizations to produce demonstrated, measurable results for the services they provide—and to deliver those services in a manner that increases access to care and enhances patient engagement. Healthcare leaders, at the epicenter of this shift, are charged with guiding their organizations to improve quality, streamline costs, and preserve operating margins.

18 Levers for High-Impact Performance Improvement: How Healthcare Organizations Can Accelerate Change and Sustain Results is a practical guide for healthcare leaders tasked with improving the financial performance of their organizations. Bridging the gap between performance improvement theory and its real-world application, this book applies systems engineering principles and methods to such critical topics as strategic growth, portfolio management, revenue cycle, and clinical utilization improvement.

The author presents a framework of 18 performance improvement “levers” that can be deployed at various levels and degrees throughout an organization. Supported by multiple case studies, this framework is based on three premises:

• The changing business of healthcare requires performance improvement interventions that are faster, broader, and more strategic than those adopted in the past.
• Because most health systems are organized and structured in a similar way, they share similar, predictable operational challenges.
• Most performance improvement initiatives fall short of expectations not from a lack of skills, effort, structure, or tools but from an absence of prioritization and alignment.

This essential guide equips healthcare leaders with the stringent operating disciplines and effective improvement strategies they need to steer their organizations though an increasingly uncertain and complex environment.

About the Author

Gary M. Auton is a senior director with Galloway Consulting, based in Atlanta. He has more than 30 years of consulting experience providing strategic and operational advisory services to a broad range of private- and public-sector organizations, including hospitals, health plans, physician practices, employer health coalitions, and state and federal health agencies. He has served on the board of examiners of the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Baldrige Performance Excellence Program.

Auton has a bachelor of science degree in health systems from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a master of business administration degree, with a concentration in strategic management and entrepreneurship, from Georgia State University. He is Lean Six Sigma Green Belt certified through the University of Michigan College of Engineering’s Integrative Systems and Design certification program. He is a frequent speaker at healthcare conferences and was a featured healthcare writer for Competitive Edge business magazine.