Lighter (U. of Tennessee-Knoxville) contends that the current financial recession provides a good opportunity to improve health care in the US, and also provides object lessons in what happens to huge industries that do not change with the times. He offers background information for people seeking to develop truly competitive and sustainable health care entities that deliver the value society demands. He covers the business case for quality, teams in healthcare performance improvement, process tools, medical informatics and information resources for quality improvement, essentials of statistical thinking and analysis, standardization and learning process management as approaches to improvement, principles of six sigma and applications in health care, and the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award for aligning and integrating performance improvement systems. Annotation ©2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)