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this is 99% invisible I'm Roman Mars. In 1998 Dr. Gary Kaplan, the CEO of Virginia Mason Medical Center

in Seattle received some bad news about his hospital.

It was losing money.

That voice is David Weinberg, who's doing our reporting for us today.

So back to the story.

The STEM losses at Virginia Mason, Dr. Kaplan,

starts studying how other hospitals are managed.

So he started scouring the country, looking for a hospital with a management system worth adopting.

And if you're anything like me, when you hear the phrase management system part of your

brain begins to shut down and another part of your brain prepares itself for

hearing a lot of either complete nonsense or common sense

targeted up with unnecessary jargon.

But really all you need to understand here is that

Dr. Kaplan was looking for a hospital that had processes

and procedures that were better than what he was already using.

But he never found one.

...