This interview with Peter Coughlan, by Mark Hurst of GoodExperience.com, provides a good look at the "broken" state of hospitals and how his company IDEO works with hospitals to improve.
Having a Masters in Health Administration, I hold this stuff close to heart. I think there are incredible opportunities to help hospitals improve and I like the way Peter describes their process.
Ordinarily the hospital spends a year or two in committee, create what they think is the perfect team process, and then goes out and tries it and fails. At IDEO we say, "fail early to succeed sooner." So after a half hour bringing into the field, we see how colleagues use it. Then we come back and revise it. So we get rapid prototyping in place. Previously it was death by committee.