You Can’t Buy Health at a Hospital | Healthcare Improvement Expert: One Question Changes Everything

Healthcare Reframed

The U.S. healthcare system has no shortage of resources, talent, or ambition. Yet for patients and families, it too often delivers fragmentation, frustration, and suffering. Few leaders have both lived that failure personally and reshaped the system globally as Maureen Bisognano. • Former President and CEO of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), where she co-led the landmark 100,000 Lives Campaign, saving more than 122,000 patients in 18 months. • Nurse, hospital executive, and global advisor to healthcare leaders in more than 50 countries. • Pioneer of the simple but transformative practice: asking not only “What’s the matter?” but “What matters to you?” In this powerful conversation with host Judson Howe (former rural hospital network president), Bisognano traces her journey from a young nurse caring for her dying brother to leading one of the most influential healthcare improvement movements in the world. Her message is both deeply personal and strategically urgent: healthcare must shift from treating sickness to co-producing health with patients, families, schools, and communities. Key themes from the conversation include: • How one doctor’s decision to ask “What do you want?” transformed her understanding of care. • Why the 100,000 Lives Campaign succeeded where policy failed—by combining urgency, simplicity, and disciplined spread. • The role of co-production, where patients become active partners in designing and managing their own care. • How “upstream” interventions—healthy food, prevention, workforce well-being—reshape health far more effectively than episodic treatment. • The power of exnovation: removing obsolete practices and processes that waste time, money, and energy. • Why loneliness, belonging, and kindness must be recognized as clinical issues. • Leadership lessons from a career defined by resilience, humor, and relentless pursuit of change against entrenched hierarchy. Bisognano challenges executives, clinicians, and policymakers alike to broaden their vision. Healthcare is not just hospitals, surgeries, and budgets—it is families, communities, and the choices we make every day about food, connection, and meaning. 1:41 Home, Hope, and Whole-Person Care 5:53 From Bedside to IHI: Purpose to Platform 7:47 “Some Is Not a Number”: 100,000 Lives Campaign 10:08 Upstream Health: Prevention Before Admission 18:21 Co-Production in Action: Patient-Led Dialysis 25:49 Recovery Colleges: A New Front Door for Mental Health 27:13 Loneliness as Diagnosis: Belonging Is Medicine 40:40 Will • Ideas • Execution: The IHI Change Formula 43:07 Exnovation: Stop Doing What Adds No Value 50:53 Redesigning Rural Hospitals: Community Health Centers 54:26 First KPI: Workforce and Family Health Meet the Guest Maureen Bisognano • Former President & CEO, Institute for Healthcare Improvement • Co-architect of the global What Matters to You movement, now in 50+ countries • International advisor on system redesign, patient safety, and culture change • Nurse, mentor, grandmother, and advocate for kindness in healthcare ⸻ Watch on YouTube | Listen on Spotify | Listen on Apple Podcasts (Links in first comment) Production: Healthcare Reframed — MicahBuller | Todd Carpenter | Lindsay Swain Hunt