This book describes in depth the history of the Institute for Healthcare Optimization (IHO) and its founder, Eugene Litvak PhD, an applied mathematician who emigrated from Ukraine in 1988 when it was part of the former Soviet Union. Since then, he has introduced US hospitals and other healthcare facilities to a unique methodology of managing patient flow. For two decades, this methodology has been further developed and applied by IHO faculty in multiple hospital and outpatient clinic settings in the US, UK, and, Canada, making IHO a recognized leader in the field. This pioneering methodology, credited with the potential to save 4-5% of the overall US annual healthcare cost (~$200 billion), has been practically proven to achieve unparalleled results: simultaneously substantially alleviating mortality, ED overcrowding, and nursing shortages while improving hospital margins by multimillions at every hospital that implemented it. Here are just a few examples:

• Cincinnati Children’s reduced their OR overtime and increased surgical case volume (an equivalent of $137 million annually), plus avoided the capital cost of a new $102 million 75-bed tower while significantly reducing ED wait times and nursing stress.
• Mayo Clinic (FL) reduced the number of OR nurses leaving the hospital due to the manmade overload by 43% (!) while experiencing a multimillion-margin improvement
• University Health Network (its Toronto General Hospital is ranked #1 in Canada and #3 worldwide), significantly increased its number of elective surgeries, while substantially reducing waiting times for emergent, urgent, and transplant surgeries.
• Ottawa Hospital in Canada reduced the annual number of postponed or canceled surgeries from 600 to zero while saving $9 million and 40(!) lives annually
• The Federally Qualified Health Center, St. Thomas (ninety percent of its population lives within 200% of the national poverty level) increased margins by multimillions while providing access to care at the level of concierge care for its historically underinsured population.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the IHO methodology has proven critical in reducing hospital ED overcrowding, lowering nurse burnout rates and resignations, thus improving nursing shortages, improving access to care and hospital margins, and allowing hospitals to treat COVID patients without canceling elective surgeries, which are crucial to most hospital’s financial wellbeing. It has also been proven to alleviate healthcare inequity.

IHO’s innovative methodology has been endorsed in different reports by the National Academy of Medicine, the American College of Emergency Physicians, the American Hospital Association, the American Nurses Association, and others. Success stories of IHO clients have been covered by the Boston Globe, Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer, The Hill, Bloomberg Radio, PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Forbes, Newsweek, CNN, MarketWatch, NPR, BBC World, CBC, Canadian Press, etc. It has been the focus for the first Joint Commission seminar on patient flow in 2005 and of its two books: “Managing Patient Flow in Hospitals: Strategies and Solutions” and “Optimizing Patient Flow: Advanced Strategies for Managing Variability to Enhance Access, Quality, and Safety”

We at IHO hope you will read about IHO’s history and methodology in the book “Hospital Heal Thyself” by Mark Taylor, but most of all we hope you will implement the recommended changes in the book to avoid further unnecessary and preventable episodes of injury or death, while simultaneously alleviating ED overcrowding and labor shortages as well as improving hospital margins and access to care for underserved populations. These lessons are the core of the book, sourced from numerous physicians, nurses, surgeons, CEOs, patient advocates, and leading health policy experts. Implementing these lessons would be your contribution to saving many lives and millions of healthcare dollars.