To thrive in the highly competitive health care marketplace, organizations must consistently demonstrate their ability to contain costs, improve quality, and increase customer satisfaction. In Raising Standards in American Health Care, nationally acclaimed health care management expert V. Clay Sherman shows managers and executives how to utilize the powerful management force of strategic standardization to overcome the most common barriers to these challenges-and increase competitive advantage.

"Sherman gives us many embraceable ideas to work with, and his message remains solid: our health care organizations must be transformed by standardizing best practices. This is a refreshing, even exciting approach to the very foundation of setting new standards for health care excellence."--William G. Gonzalez, chief health system officer, Spectrum Health, Grand Rapids, MI; Top 100 Hospitals Winner 1994, 1995, 1998; America's Top 100 Integrated Health Care Systems Winner 1998