Treating organisational illness: a practical approach to facilitating improvements in health care

Abstract

The health sector contains many problems that are widely recognised and ought to be easily resolved, and yet some organisations seem to be powerless to act. We argue that this mainly reflects weaknesses in the organisational culture, and present an approach that we have been using to address them. We describe some simple analytical tools, and report our experiences in using them in organisations in several countries. We conclude that most people believe organisational weaknesses are important, are willing and eager to try to address them, and do in fact find ways of making some useful changes - at least, in the short term.