(Productivity Press: Boca Raton, FL) -- Healthcare Kaizen, by Mark Graban (Productivity Press, 2012), focuses on the principles and methods of daily continuous improvement, or kaizen, for health care professionals and organizations. Kaizen is a Japanese word that means “change for the better,” as popularized by Masaaki Imai in his 1986 book, Kaizen: The Key to Japan’s Competitive Success (McGraw-Hill/Irwin, 1986) and through the books of Norman Bodek, both of whom contributed introductory material for this book.

In 1989, Donald M. Berwick, M.D., founder of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and former administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, endorsed the principles of kaizen in The New England Journal of Medicine, describing it as “the continuous search for opportunities for all processes to get better.” This book shows how to make this goal a reality.

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