Rhoda Ryba specializes in process improvement. She has pioneered an innovative and highly successful method that enables teams to dramatically accelerate the improvement process, produce creative ideas and achieve superior outcomes for clinical and business process excellence.

Rhoda has 26 years experience in hospital and health plan management. Rhoda has been vice president for patient administrative services and chief quality officer at Overlake Hospital Medical Center in Bellevue, Washington; director of quality and health management at Presbyterian Health Plan in Alburquerque, New Mexico; vice president for quality at Legacy Health System in Portland, Oregon and medical staff services administrator at Good Samaritan Medical Center in Phoenix, Arizona. Rhoda studied at Arizona State University and the University of New Mexico. She has published articles and been a presenter at national conferences on clinical quality improvement and systems thinking.

The process improvement method Rhoda has pioneered, Big!mprovement , has three key attributes:

• The method requires only a matter of weeks (even for complex business and clinical processes) whereas conventional methods require many months;
• For clinical topics, the method is sufficiently efficient for teams that meaningful participation by practicing physicians is achieved, thereby increasing the effectiveness of adherence to the new process;
• The method is grounded in meaningful outcomes measurements that are linked to real financial, market and patient care quality performance so that the effort is integrated with the organization's strategy, not a response to the latest crisis or accreditation survey.

Rhoda provides the Big!mprovement method through her association with HealthWorks and its partner firm, Breakthrough Learning.