(LEI: Cambridge, MA) -- Despite expensive increases in the cost of U.S. health care, Americans too often get mediocre results—or worse. National studies show that 15 million incidents of medical harm—e.g., drug errors, wrong-side surgeries, or infections—occur in the United States annually.

Reducing errors and cost at the same time requires a revolutionary kind of health care delivery—lean health care, according to Dr. John Toussaint and Roger A. Gerard, Ph.D., authors of the new book On the Mend: Revolutionizing Healthcare to Save Lives and Transform the Industry (Lean Enterprise Institute, 2010). Toussaint, CEO emeritus of ThedaCare, a four-hospital health care system in Wisconsin, and Gerard, its chief learning officer, candidly describe ThedaCare’s lean health care journey, an effort that slashed errors, improved patient outcomes, raised staff morale, and saved $27 million dollars in costs without layoffs.

On the Mend readers will learn:

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