REVIEWS
Kirkus Review
“A Playbook to revolutionize America’s inadequate health care system.”
”Lazes and Rudden want to fix the malfunctioning health care system that has not met the needs of patients. They provide a flexible game plan to unify frontline staff and employers through labor-management partnerships. While LMP is not a new concept, the authors’ perspectives on it are fresh, which makes their message particularly relevant today…. Health care professionals, managers, and educators should welcome these eye-opening and valuable strategies.”
WHAT MAKES REAL CHANGE POSSIBLE AND WHAT STOPS IT IN ITS TRACKS?
This deeply thoughtful book is really a series of stories about the centrality of engaging BOTH front end workers and management to maximize the capacity for change in our healthcare systems. Too often, the same polarization that is crippling us culturally and politically is reflected in the exclusion of the front-end from critical decisions — whether we are addressing challenges to access to care, improving turn around time for lab work, or reducing waste. While the concepts of lean management (using teams with workers and management) first brought to the US through Toyota are no longer ‘new,’ the central tenet of this book addresses where this approach has succeeded, where it has failed. Here, it is the partnership between the two that makes 'improvement' something vibrant, something dynamic for ALL involved! This makes it essential reading for those who aspire to create and sustain change in our very broken health system. Its stories are told through the wise prisms of a community organizer-health administrator and a clinical psychiatrist, both steeped in knowledge of what makes groups such powerful forces for good — or bad — and how innovation can be made possible through bringing labor and management together in partnership. There is much substance here — substance that is essential to a health system under siege and still floundering for a better way. This book could not come at a better time!
Johanna Ferman, M.D.
Principal, Integrus Health Group
Practical Ways to Improve Healthcare
“Having been a practicing physician from 1972 - 2007, I have witnessed the increasing frustration and burn out among my colleagues in their roles as health care providers. This book focuses on ways to reverse the increasing marginalization of health care providers resulting from hospital and health insurance administrations main focus on "the bottom line.”
I strongly suggest that this book be required reading by all involved in health care delivery in this country.”
Ernesto A. Amaranto, MD
Inspiring and encouraging examination of what will fix healthcare
I was most impressed by the authors' focus on a neglected aspect of the health care debate. Most discussions focus on economics. Who's going to pay. But Lazes and Rudden put the spotlight on relationships, specifically the benefits of mutual trust and collaboration between management and workers. Though the health care industry provides the examples, the lessons apply to all industries and remind us of what we have lost by diminishing the importance of organized labor.
Prudy Gourguechon, MD
Looking to improve patient outcomes, profit, and employee morale? This a Must Read.
“A must-read for any hospital administrator - or executive in any field - looking to improve patient outcomes, profit, and employee morale. In easy to understand language, the authors present case studies across industries of businesses that successfully partnered managers with employees to positively impact their bottom lines. The key to success: fostering employee innovation.”
Vincent Pina
Inspiring and encouraging examination of what will fix healthcare
I was most impressed by the authors' focus on a neglected aspect of the health care debate. Most discussions focus on economics. Who's going to pay. But Lazes and Rudden put the spotlight on relationships, specifically the benefits of mutual trust and collaboration between management and workers. Though the health care industry provides the examples, the lessons apply to all industries and remind us of what we have lost by diminishing the importance of organized labor.
Prudy Gourguechon, MD
The definitive analysis of the health care workforce
America’s health care system is in trouble. It is heavily reliant on the people who staff it, but they are largely ignored and excluded from its management and governance. Lazes and Rudden explore how a better understanding of these people is vital for solving the problems of our health care system.
A fascinating, engaging and intelligent analysis.
Robert Michels, M.D.
Walsh McDermott University Professor of Medicine, Weill Cornell Medical College
Former Stephen & Suzanne Weiss Dean and Provost for Medical Affairs, Cornell University
A Most Timely and Insightful Contribution
Just as our nation faces the challenge of efficiently distributing COVID vaccines, and as a new federal administration offers hope for an expansion in the availability of health care, this examination of the ways in which our hospitals operate offers insightful suggestions about how the provision of hospital-based health care can be dramatically improved. Indeed, to the extent that the authors offer experiential as well as theoretical observations about labor-management relations, the authors' analyses appear relevant to work environments beyond hospitals, as reflected in their case studies in which they worked with General Motors and Xerox, where their interventions appear to have improved morale, efficiency, and profitability. Of added value to those with an interest in the history of labor relations, the authors offer a very brief but useful summary of that subject which helps contextualize their book.
Jackie Mann
Fantastic book regarding America's health care system and how it needs to change
I received an advanced copy of this book to give an honest review. I am not in the medical field and everything in this book is understandable and enlightening. America's healthcare needs a change, and I think that this book could help us change America's healthcare system for the better. I encourage you all to read it, even if you are not in the medical field.
Adrienne
Innovation book on the health system
Such a wonderful and innovative look at our health care system. The combination of experts from the psychiatric and labor community make you wonder why this model isn't' be adopted nation wide. For a non professional in this field, this book was an interesting and easy read. I recommend it to everyone who cares about our health care system and who would to see the inequities change.
Leora Kahn
How collaboration at all levels can be a force multiplier for an organization
This is a must-read for every thoughtful management and labor health care leader today. Through successful case examples, this book demonstrates how we can both lead and follow proven pathways for resolving the vexing problems care givers and managers alike face daily in their struggle to offer their best to patients and families. After years of health care and labor-management relations experience, I can confidently recommend From the Ground Up as both timely and indispensable.
Joel Fadem
SPRING Network, formerly UCLA Institute for Research on Labor & Employment and Anderson School of Management
Healthcare Leaders need to read this book .....
Our current pandemic has revealed significant flaws of our healthcare delivery system. Healthcare leaders responsible for policy and strategy now need to accelerate their ability to innovate in order to resolve significant problems in terms of the access and quality of care. Lazes’ and Rudden’s new book, From the Ground UP, provides a practical and important roadmap for achieving needed changes by engaging frontline staff in activities to restructure our current delivery systems and optimize the use of new technologies ---a must read for both management and union healthcare leaders.
Stu Winby
CEO - SPRING Network
Solving Care Quality and Systemic Problems in America’s hospitals (and beyond)
“From the Ground Up provides a roadmap for how Labor-Management Partnerships (LMPs) work, describing essential core practices for their success. Involving all constituents in a well-structured analysis of organizational problems, unit by unit, LMP’s allow groups of managers, administrators, and staff to develop and implement solutions to their pressing quality of care or production issues. In healthcare, Labor-Management Partnerships have improved patient care, controlled costs, and helped to create more meaningful work for frontline clinicians in a variety of settings.”
Porchlight – December 2, 2020
Forskningpolitikk quarterly review 9, November 2020
(an Norwegian journal discussing focusing on issues of innovation and education)
The book (From the Ground Up) sheds light on the experiences of successful collaborative projects in American healthcare organizations… How managers, union leaders and frontline staff have created common learning arenas and developed joint cooperation.
The book clearly describes the need for healthcare workers to be involved in resolving workplace problems together for the benefit of patients, employees, and managers.