Think Big Start Small Move Fast

Think Big start small Move Fast, A Blueprint for Transformation from The Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation by Nicholas LaRusso, MD, Barbara Spurrier, MHA, and Gianrico Farrugia, MD, McGraw Hill 2015

Compare this book to the Cleveland Clinic book and you'll find both institutions'  foundations rest on dedication to care, but the approaches and language are very different.  Here, the three Mayo co-authors offer insight into the leapfrog power of innovation applied in a healthcare setting.  Just as innovation powers American industry, the hope here is that innovation will transform American healthcare.

Listen to the story of the "Buzzy" chair, an innovative device created to take the fear out of blood drawing, officially named the Mayo Clinic Pediatric Phlebotomy Chair.  It looks like a bumblebee and vibrates when a child touches it! 

Chapter 8 offers specific project examples with great detail on four platforms:  Mayo Practice, Connected Care, and Health and Well-Being.  You will be interested in the Mayo process and the experts who helped create this innovation - the microConsults.  Working from a current framework "Model of Care:  A conveyor Belt," see how the clinic envisions and changes to a more personalized model.  Figure 8.8 Optimized Care Team Workspace is a great experimental model that many institutions have faced - the challenge of working within outmoded phsycal flows and set-ups is a great challenge for kaizen teams.  See my article on Seattle Children's Hospital for more on this issue.

Appendix B contains the Center for Innovation's 2014 Project Listing.  This is an impressive chart of 39 projects with wide-ranging impact throughout various functional areas.  Rehab, a subject dear to my heart, is one of the areas covered by the Innovation Accelerator Platform, designed to "improve patient resilience and surgical outcomes."  Love it!  Want to hear more!  There are innovation projects to use a smartphone and lens adapter to perform ophthalmology tests,   a Patient Decision Support Tool for Breast Cancer Care, projects to help patients live with type 2 diabetes, congestive heart failure.

Mill Girl Verdict:  B-------.  If you make the charts and graphs to small, too hard to read, e.g Figure 5.10, 5.6, 5.8, 6.3, 6.6 the reader won't read them...   As brilliant and intriguing as the innovation is in this book - especially Chapter 8 -  the layout, font, margins, photos, charts are all disappointing.  As my mother, The Original Mill Girl always said, "Patricia, you can do better."    And my old giant Free Press editor Bob Wallace said, " A book is forever.  Get it right."