Saving Lives: US Health Care Improvement

Posted on July 16, 2005  Comments (9)

Topic: Management Improvement

8 part special report by US News and Word Report on improving the US Health Care system.

Join IHI in an ambitious initiative called the 100K Lives Campaign. Its goal is to save 100,000 hospital patients’ lives by 9 a.m. on June 14, 2006, exactly 18 months from Berwick’s call to arms, by introducing six changes in hospital procedures. Each change addresses a problem, such as deaths from infections following surgery, and presents an arsenal of weapons to fight it, such as tighter timing of antibiotic doses before surgery.

I have long felt the Institute of Healthcare Improvement and Don Berwick were the leaders in health care management improvement. The Breakthrough Series is a great white paper on an excellent improvement methodology IHI developed and use. IHI white paper library.

A Breakthrough Series Collaborative is a short-term (6- to 15-month) learning system that brings together a large number of teams from hospitals or clinics to seek improvement in a focused topic area. Since 1995, IHI has sponsored over 50 such Collaborative projects on several dozen topics involving over 2,000 teams from 1,000 health care organizations.

Teams in such Collaboratives have achieved dramatic results, including reducing waiting times by 50 percent, reducing worker absenteeism by 25 percent, reducing ICU costs by 25 percent, and reducing hospitalizations for patients with congestive heart failure by 50 percent.

9 Responses to “Saving Lives: US Health Care Improvement”

  1. CuriousCat » Blog Archive » Health Care Crisis
    June 17th, 2006 @ 5:29 pm

    The health care system is broken and has been for a long time. Symptoms like the huge cost of health care, medical errors, ER problems etc. are all related…

  2. Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog » Health Care: Saving Lives
    August 25th, 2006 @ 12:23 pm

    [...] We wrote about the IHI campaign to save lives through improved health care management previously – Saving Lives: US Health Care Improvement. IHI estimates 122,300 from December 2004 to June 2006. The PBS Newshour aired a report on the campaign. [...]

  3. Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog » Deming Institute Conference: Tom Nolan
    November 11th, 2006 @ 9:35 am

    [...] He also discussed the 100,000 lives campaign. Quotes he used: “Management is prediction” – W. Edwards Deming, “There is no substitute for knowledge” W. Edwards Deming, “Knowing is not enough, we must apply” Geothe. [...]

  4. Seven Leadership Leverage Points
    January 29th, 2007 @ 9:42 pm

    [...] You can see why I like IHI. They don’t try to sell quick fixes. The are interested in achieving extremely significant results that continue into the [...]

  5. Healthcare Costs Spike Again
    October 28th, 2007 @ 7:36 pm

    Deming noted excessive health care costsas a deadly disease to the American economy and the news just gets year after year. This system is obviously broken and in need of fundemental change…

  6. CuriousCat: The Ergonomics of Innovation
    September 22nd, 2008 @ 8:40 am

    “Berwick and his team believed that simply asking hospital staffs to ‘try harder’ to save lives wasn’t enough; people need concrete, easily learned and implemented tools…”

  7. Anonymous
    December 2nd, 2009 @ 6:28 am

    I have long felt the Institute of Healthcare Improvement and Don Berwick were the leaders in health care management improvement. The Breakthrough Series is a great white paper on an excellent improvement methodology IHI developed and use. IHI white paper library.

  8. Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog » Lean Health Care: ThedaCare
    January 18th, 2010 @ 11:17 pm

    [...] Saving Lives: US Health Care Improvement [...]

  9. I Strongly Support Elizabeth Warren and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau at Curious Cat Investing and Economics Blog
    June 2nd, 2011 @ 6:27 pm

    [...] They normally are so co-opted even if they have good ideas they can’t get anything done. Don Berwick is a great person to have lead health care reform. The system is so messed up I am skeptical he can [...]

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