McDonald's quality-improvement effort has lessons for healthcare industry, according to an article on the Fierce Healthcare website.

McDonald's recently announced an initiative to phase out chickens raised with antibiotics used in human medicine over the next two years and discontinue the use of milk from cows given the artificial growth hormone rbST by the end of 2015. 

Experts say the move may spark a trend to increase focus on quality, possibly leading to updated quality benchmarks.

The advantage of these strategies is that they address the actual issues consumers have with the product rather than dazzling them. Therefore, hospital leaders' top priority should be improving care quality.

With just a small number of patients making up a large portion the nation's medical expenses, targeting these "high risk" groups is vital to controlling healthcare costs and reducing utilization.

Read the article.