WIHI: The Health Care Tune-Up Show! Leading with Logic and Emotion

Date: ​March 18, 2010

Featuring: 

• Chip Heath, Co-author, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard
• Joe McCannon, Faculty and former Vice President, Institute for Healthcare Improvement

There are probably as many books out there on “change” as there are problems in need of solutions. But, just when you think you’ve read and heard it all, comes one of the most inventive approaches yet to getting things moving. Switch offers just the excuse we need right now to set down the almost unbearable burden of trying to do everything at once to fix health care. While we wonder what happens next with health care reform or any big system’s attempts at transformation, why not also focus on “bright spots” and the power of turning standard strategic plans on their heads and unleashing a very different kind of innovation?​

WIHI host Madge Kaplan welcomes Chip Heath and Joe McCannon to remind health care improvers everywhere of the resources and possibilities to improve patient care that are, in some instances, staring us in the face. There’s a lot in the behavioral psychology that Chip and co-author (and brother) Dan Heath are drawing from that will sound familiar to anyone who’s been bowled over by unexpected learning that results from small tests of change and PDSA cycles. Find out how those emotions matter more than you might think, especially if your aim is making a lot of small successes roll up into larger and more lasting change. That’s where Joe McCannon comes in. He successfully ran two of the biggest improvement initiatives yet in the US, involving thousands of hospitals. Turns out the Rider, the Elephant, and the Path were all engaged. Curious? Listen to this WIHI!