Professor Jeffrey Braithwaite is a leading health services and systems researcher with an international reputation for his work investigating and contributing to systems improvement. He has particular expertise in the culture and structure of acute settings, leadership, management and change in health sector organisations, quality and safety in health care, resilient health care, accreditation and surveying processes in international context and the restructuring of health services. Professor Braithwaite is well known for bringing management and leadership concepts and evidence into the clinical arena and he has published extensively (more than 400 refereed contributions, and 600 total publications) about organisational, social and team approaches to care which has raised the importance of these in Australia and internationally. He has presented at or chaired international and national conferences, workshops, symposia and meetings on more than 600 occasions, including over 70 keynote addresses. Theories and ideas he has helped shape, formulate or devise, and provided research findings for, are now in common use as a result of his work: multi-method, triangulated approaches to research, the boundary-less hospital, accreditation models in general practice and beyond, clinician-managers as key players in reform initiatives, fundamental principles for the governance of health systems, diversity in clinical professional groups, inter-professional learning and culture change rather than restructuring as a more sustainable strategy for reform. His empirical results have exposed the distinctive attitudes of clinical professional groups, how clinician-managers enact their leadership responsibilities, the relationships between efficiencies and structural type of teaching hospitals, the behavioural displays of clinicians in service structures and the status of system-wide patient safety improvement initiatives. Professor Braithwaite is the recipient as at 2014 of career rese

Preface

Acknowledgments

About the Editors

About the Contributors

Contributors

Introduction

Part I The Americas

1 Argentina: Successful Initiatives in Quality and Patient Safety in Argentina

2 Brazil: Knowledge Management for Quality Improvement in Brazil

3 Canada: Improving Stroke Outcomes in Canada: The Accreditation Canada Stroke Distinction Program

4 Chile: Constructing Symbolic Capital: A Case Study from Chile

5 Ecuador: Improving Hospital Management as Part of the Health Reform Process in Ecuador: The Case of Abel Gilbert Pontón Hospital

6 Guyana: Holistic Geriatric Mega-Clinics for Care of the Elderly in Guyana

7 Mexico: Monitoring and Evaluation Strategy of Mexican Health Reform: Content, Conditions for Implementation, and Sustainability

8 The United States of America: The Use of Report Cards and Outcome Measurements to Improve the Safety of Surgical Care: The American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program

9 Venezuela: Misión Barrio Adentro: Universal Health Coverage Efforts in Venezuela

Part II Africa

10 Ghana: Arresting the Brain Drain in Ghana

11 Namibia: A Public Health Approach to Quality Management: How a Disease-Specific Improvement Program Propelled a National Health-Systems-Wide Quality Program in Namibia

12 Nigeria: Removing the Imaginary Walls That Divide and Limit

13 Rwanda: Community-Based Health Insurance in Rwanda: How It Fostered Achievement of the Millennium Development Goals

14 South Africa: The Development of an Equitable National Juristic Body to Regulate Public and Private Healthcare Establishments in South Africa: A Progress Report

15 West Africa (Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone): Quality Improvement in Ebola-Affec