Dr. Jake Taylor Jacobs

Let me describe a meeting that happens every week in hospitals across America.

The CFO is looking at spreadsheets.

Costs are up again.

Instrument budgets are blown.

Premium labor through the roof.

Revenue leaking somewhere it can't be traced.

The COO is fielding complaints from surgical services.

Starting late, surgeons frustrated, OR efficiency stuck at a ceiling nobody can break through.

The CNO is watching quality metrics that won't improve.

Near misses ticking up root cause analysis that keep pointing back to the same place of inflection.

And when they turn to SPD directors and ask what exactly is happening, they get explanations like staffing challenges, volume spikes, supply chain issues, difficult surgeons.

All of it is true.

None of it's satisfying.

The meeting ends, action items are signed.

Everyone agrees to try harder.

Six months later, same meeting, same conversation, same frustration.

Last episode, I told you about IBM and how Lou Gertzner discovered that the problem wasn't the people, it was the system.

Today, I'm bringing that lesson home because what happened at IBM is happening in your hospitals all across America right now.

This is bread to leave.

I'm excited to be back.