“We can do better” was the underlying takeaway message from the 15th annual Mayo Clinic Quality Conference. This year’s theme was “Creating and Paying for Value in Health Care.”

The conference, held May 3–4, 2011, in Rochester, Minnesota, drew about 1,000 people to hear national leaders in health care quality as well as dozens of local, regional, and international presenters who showcased quality improvement efforts.

“We’ve got great doctors and nurses,” said Dr. Charles Denham, a keynote speaker and chairman of the Texas Medical Institute of Technology (TMIT), a medical research organization dedicated to finding patient-centered solutions to create value, save lives, and save dollars in health care. “But we don’t have the systems to support them.”

He noted that almost 90 percent of patient harm is due to system failures. And that can make being a patient a dangerous proposition. Health-care harm remains the third leading cause of death in this country.

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