Optimizing Your Capacity to Care ─ A Systems Approach to Hospital and Population Health Management

Our nation's capacity to care is destined to become increasingly constrained as an aging and increasingly unhealthy population must contend with a reduction in medical professionals and increasingly tight financial resources. We need a significant overhaul and rethinking of our entire healthcare system such that we simultaneously impact capacity, cost, quality, and accessibility. This book is a comprehensive guide to a new way to properly manage total community-wide care capacity. Though clear examples and actual project results, the book demonstrates the outcomes of driving otherwise siloed performance improvement efforts towards a systems-level way of thinking.

Pierce Story is the co-founder of Capacity Strategies, Inc., a firm dedicated to the optimization of the "Capacity to Care" in hospitals and communities. His unique expertise lies in "Dynamic Care Capacity Management" (a concept he has developed over the past 15 years); process and systems optimization; resource utilization; and the application of systems dynamics and process simulation to healthcare environments.

During his 25-plus-year healthcare career, Story has developed several innovative care and business models to improve health system operations and promote population health outcomes. His passion lies in creating holistic, systemic responses to key constraints facing healthcare, especially in low-income and at-risk communities. He has worked extensively in departmental and hospital-wide performance and capacity optimization as well as new facility planning throughout the care continuum, including work in Emergency Departments, Surgical Services, inpatient units, and community-based health clinics.