Engineering Solutions to America's Healthcare Challenges

This book vividly presents the facts and challenges that systems professionals examine every day before identifying how the system-based answer to health care reform applies. The author offers solutions that present a systems approach to changing the way healthcare professionals do business and take care of patients. These solutions, backed by case studies and proven examples/narratives, include: implementing Six Sigma in emergency rooms; 5S in accounting for medical inventory; using Theory of Constraints to form a plan for shortening the length of stay in hospitals; how informatics are used to aggregate and benchmark private, sensitive date; and design of experiments to recruit and retain the best health care talent. The book also offers an analysis and examples of The Institute of Medicine's six aims for health care: safety, effectiveness, efficiency, timeliness, family-centered focus, and equity.

Ryan Burge is a certified lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt and an American Society for Quality (ASQ) CSSBB, CQE, CQIA, and CQPA. As a management and technology consultant, Burge has led multiple process/systems improvement and decision support projects in both the public and private sectors.

He is an expert in lean Six Sigma applications, quality and industrial engineering, risk analysis, statistical analysis, and management strategy. He is the author of two books and multiple engineering articles tied to lean Six Sigma, ethics, professional development, change management, and health care quality.

After completing an internship with the Federal Bureau of Investigation as an undergraduate student at the University of Oklahoma, Burge pursued a career in improving processes and systems for the federal government. In 2007, Burge accepted a position with Booz Allen Hamilton in Arlington, Virginia. As a consultant, his clients have included the Office of the Secretary of Defense, U.S. Navy, U.S. Army, U.S. Marine Corps, Global and Fortune 500 companies, and others. With a strong interest in quality practices, Burge seized other opportunities to create value across Booz Allen Hamilton, and now, as managing partner and co-owner of the Boulevard Consulting Group, the professional community as a whole.

He has held board memberships with the American Society for Quality Maryland/D.C. section and the Maryland Performance Excellence Foundation (MPEF)—a Malcolm Baldrige program for the state of Maryland. He has collaborated with industry executives on a biomedical and biotechnology special interest group for ASQ, BioMedTech, which engages the regulatory, industry, and academic communities with honest, informed, advanced discussion of biomedical and biotechnical research and topics as relating to quality principles and practices.

In line with his personal commitment to young people, Burge is the author of the book Making Christ Your College Roommate, which details personal college experiences and tips in helping students overcome difficult situations. He also serves as a member of the Board of Visitors at the University of Oklahoma’s College of Engineering.