A few days ago I went to Pennsylvania to speak at a patient safety event sponsored by Excela Health. It was a pretty drive- through Maryland, across the Appalachian Mountains, and then into the Allegheny Mountains heading through Southern Pennsylvania. As Tom the driver and I drove deeper into central Pennsylvania, we passed through little towns- Breezewood, Somerset, Ligonier. I imagined these were old mining towns that were once bustling with...

Energized from the previous night’s meeting with the HCA folks, I took a cab to the John F. Kennedy Library to a conference put on by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts (BCBSMA). The conference was titled “In Pursuit of Health Care’s Holy Grail: The Quality Movement That is Transforming Health Care”.The conference room was beautiful with a wall of windows as the backdrop of the stage, overlooking pretty Dorchester...

I flew to Boston on Monday, September 16, for a conference put on by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, which was to be held the next morning. Earlier in the week Jim Conway from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement contacted me and told me about a group in Boston that was doing some interesting things in the patient safety advocacy vein. He suggested that we meet.And so Monday night I had dinner with five people from Health Care for...