What Can Health Care Learn From Ikea?
A lot, it turns out.
My experience with my father left me scrambling to understand the complex world of health care, and wanting to help other families navigate medical challenges. Using the teaching power of stories and analogies, I wrote Design to Survive, describing what health care (patients, providers, everyone) can learn from the IKEA furniture company. Imagine it: everyone gets decent, affordable service, regardless of the language they speak or where they live. Expenses are streamlined, quality is predictable, customers participate in creating value, and everyone shares in a satisfying experience and cost savings.
FYI I've bought a few things at IKEA, but have no other connection to them. Also, the book's Foreword, by the late, talented Michael Graves (designer of Disney World's Swan and Dolphin hotels, renowned designer for Target products, and phenomenal human being who faced life in a wheelchair with humor and grace) is worth a read.
"Had me hooked
from the first page."
- Fred Lee, author of If Disney Ran Your Hospital: 9 1/2 Things You Would do Differently
"A tremendous toolkit forgetting safe care...Mastors' is a wonderfully pragmatic mind. There is a lot we physicians can learn from her."
- Marty Makary MD,
Johns Hopkins Surgeon and Author of Unaccountable