Design to Survive : 9 Ways an IKEA Approach Can Fix Health Care and Save Lives

The U.S. spends the most in the world on health care and research, yet our outcomes are among the worst in industrialized nations. Hundreds of thousands die every year from medical harm.
Imagine a world where health care took a page from the IKEA furniture company---where expenses were streamlined, quality was predictable, customers participated, and everyone shared in the cost savings.
Through colorful analogies, stories from families and top doctors, and the author’s quest to find out what happened to her own father, Design to Survive serves up key strategies for patients, families and providers, with the conviction that we can do better.

Stunned that 200,000 people die each year from unintended medical harm, and reeling the unexpected preventable death of her own father as well as from the stories shared by her patient advocate friends and colleagues, Pat Mastors was determined to move people to action. Design to Survive: 9 Ways an IKEA Approach Can Fix Health Care & Save Lives is a passionate plea for cost transparency, better teamwork, and getting patients to “roll up their sleeves and help”. “This is the book all care providers should be reading on their first day of nursing or medical school,” says Jean Rexford, Executive Director of the Connecticut Center for Patient Safety. “Rarely have I read a book focused on patient safety that is this engaging. Mastors visual storytelling combined with a spot-on explanation of how the IKEA business philosophy can change the delivery of healthcare inspires hope that positive change is possible,"" says Regina Holliday, Founding Artist of The Walking Gallery of Health Care. Design to Survive “. . .offers a simple, easy-to-understand survival tool to help keep the unthinkable---a serious medical error---from turning into the irreversible,"" says Michael L. Millenson, author of Demanding Medical Excellence: Doctors and Accountability in the Information Age.