For nearly a decade, data has shown that almost 100,000 deaths occur each year due to preventable hospital errors. Accounts of botched medical services pepper news outlets. Even celebrities are reporting ill effects: Dennis Quaid, Glenn Beck.

Today, CBS News reported on what some hospitals and some state and federal government organizations are doing to begin to address the problem.

Providing care and medical services to a person in a hospital is a process—just as much as assembling a product or completing a financial transaction are processes. (The only difference being that a human being is the object that goes through the process.) For those reading who know a bit of Six Sigma, Lean, or BPM—imagine how much opportunity there is within the domain of healthcare to undertake process improvement work! And because healthcare directly affects the wellbeing of people, imagine the direct benefits to individuals and communities. This news story from CBS begs questions like: why haven’t hospitals started improvement efforts sooner? And: what factors in our society (doctor/nurse practices, economic pressures, government regulations, hospital procedures, insurance constraints, education, news media, etc., etc., etc.) allow poor quality to reach such deadly levels in the first place?

At least, in some quarters, healthcare providers are hopefully starting to approach the very basics.