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Bill Hurt, the new CEO of Hillside Hospital, knew that the forecast was grim. The hospital’s service volumes and market share were dropping precipitously. The direct causes of the problems were numerous, but an indirect cause—and major barrier to…

“This patient might have died from complications related to her TPN (total parenteral nutrition) infusion,” said Dr. Isaac Johnson, Chief Medical Officer at Acme Medical Center (AMC). He was referring to problems that occurred during the treatment of a…

When Dr. Marwan started as director of Ramses Hospital in Cairo in 2008, charged by the Minister of Health with improving performance, he found the hospital had been neglected for decades. A Ministry of Health quality audit had recently given the…

This case considers the challenges, benefits, and costs of hospital participation in a widely recognized surgical quality improvement benchmarking program. The American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS NSQIP®) issues…

In April 2003, Dr. Julio Frenk, the Minister of Health of Mexico, prepared for the debate on his health reform bill to begin in the Senate. Since becoming Minister of Health in President Vicente Fox’s administration in 2000, Dr. Frenk had worked…

Thandeka Sisulu had just been hired as the new administrative director for the Eastern Cape Clinic, located in the outskirts of the South African city of East London. The Clinic had opened about 18 months ago with support from the government and from two…

Guidelines for writing a teaching note, from our own CBTL team.

“The class discussion inherent in case teaching is well known for stimulating the development of students’ critical thinking skills, yet instructors often need guidance on managing that class discussion to maximize learning. Teaching with…

“A new study finds that undergraduate students in classes with traditional stand-and-deliver lectures are 1.5 times more likely to fail than students in classes that use more stimulating, so-called active learning methods.”

“The 225 studies analyzed document that active learning leads to increases in examination performance that would raise average grades by a half a letter, and that failure rates under traditional lecturing increase by 55% over the rates observed…