All Entries Tagged With: "IHI"
Thinking differently, working together at the IHI forum
Last week, I attended the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s National Forum on Quality Improvement in Health Care, and I certainly wasn’t the only one. Six thousand of you attended in person, and more than 15,000 attended virtually.
The national conference lives up to its hype. It is invigorating to attend so many sessions dedicated to quality improvement. Keynotes from U.S. Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius as well as the new president and CEO of IHI, Maureen Bisognano were just the tip of the iceberg.
Bisognano talked about the triple aim of IHI: improving the health of the population, experience of healthcare, and the cost of care. Many, she said, see two pathways to these goals: cutting costs and rationing care; however, Bisognano championed a third: creating new designs.
This was what many sessions I attended were about: working with others to think differently in order to truly achieve different results. Participants were urged to think differently about what harm is preventable, about why physicians may be reluctant to participate in quality improvement efforts, and about the patient experience as a whole, from ED visit to wherever the patient may end up.
I must also mention one of the other keynote speakers, Cory Booker, mayor of Newark, New Jersey. Booker has no experience in healthcare, but he certainly has a different way of implementing actions that is translatable to healthcare. Newark has seen more than 40% reductions in both shootings and murders (as of July 1, 2008, about midway through his first term). Booker credits this accomplishment with aiming incredibly high and focusing on the power of collaborating. To reach high ambitions, he urged, you must take the collective will of a community and embrace it. Engaging the whole of the community, he said, will create results unimaginable of the individual
Those were some of the highlights of the conference. Stay tuned to the Patient Safety Blog and Patient Safety Monitor Journal for more topics covered at the conference.
Were you at the forum? What did you think? What was your highlight of the week? Please share with your peers below!
IHI’s Bisognano says future holds more patient involvement in care
In a Q & A published Monday with The Boston Globe, Maureen Bisognano, the new president and CEO of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, said that she sees the future of patient care as becoming much more patient-centric. She feels that the best encounters between patients and their physicians come when the physician has educated him or herself about the patient’s condition prior to the encounter; however, during the encounter the physician works with the patient to come up with a plan of care based on what the patient says as well.
Bisognano also said that the incentive system in the United States has forced physicians into moving away from this patient-centered type of care.
To read The Boston Globe’s full Q & A with Bisognano, click here.
IHI names Bisognano as new president
With all of the news this week concerning Don Berwick’s appointment as the administrator of the CMS, I thought it was only fitting to post about his replacement at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI). The IHI has announced that Maureen Bisognano will replace Berwick as the president and CEO. Bisognano is a nurse by background and has been serving as the IHI’s executive vice president and COO for the past 15 years. She has partnered with Berwick since she joined the IHI in 1995 on managing the group. You can read more about her in this release from the IHI.
Bisognano is a well-known leader in the quality improvement field, and I’m sure she’ll follow in Berwick’s footsteps of growing the IHI and using its power to improve the quality of healthcare around the globe.
I also wanted to direct readers to this roundup of comments from industry leaders about Berwick’s appointment to CMS administrator from HealthLeaders Media.
Readers, what are your reactions?
Berwick appointed to head CMS
It is being widely reported this morning that Donald Berwick, MD, president and co-founder of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, is receiving a recess appointment to the post of Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) administrator. Berwick, who was nominated for the position back in March, was supposed to have gone through a Senate confirmation hearing. However, President Obama has decided to use his power to bypass the Senate hearing and appoint Berwick.
There was expected to be some debate over Berwick’s ability to serve, mainly based on his previous expressions of admiration for Britain’s National Health Service, as well as some fear of his thoughts on rationing. However, many in the healthcare industry will see his appointment as a huge win. Berwick has been a patient safety and quality improvement advocate for years, and his leadership will be greatly valued at the CMS.
To read more about Berwick’s recess appointment, you can click here for the New York Times story.
Don Berwick to lead CMS
Rumors were circulating last Friday, March 26th, that Don Berwick, MD, the leader of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) would be named the new administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). Those rumors have been confirmed today, and President Obama will officially nominate Berwick to head up the CMS, according to the New York Times. Berwick has been a crusader in the quality improvement movement, inspiring thousands of healthcare providers through his work at the IHI and elsewhere.
A senate committee hearing would be required to confirm Berwick as administrator of the CMS, which has not had a permanent leader since 2006. As head of the CMS Berwick would inherit a great deal of responsibility for carrying out the healthcare reform that passed last week.
I, for one, think this is an exciting announcement and great development for the healthcare of the nation. I think the IHI under Berwick’s leadership has proven itself to be a leader in providing solutions for healthcare organizations concerned with quality. Hopefully he can take this same preoccupation with quality (which is probably why he was picked) and mesh it with the political and budgeting know-how needed for this position.
You can read the full New York Times article by clicking here.
QUEST, now in second year, aims to improve healthcare
Although healthcare reform seems to have hit a standstill, there are many quality improvement initiatives out there that continue to work for better patient outcomes. The QUEST program (Quality, Efficiency, Safety, and Transparency), a joint venture between Premier and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, is helping those hospitals involved collect and compare quality data. My college Philip Betbeze at HealthLeaders Media wrote this column last week about how QUEST has helped those facilities involved dramatically lower costs. The goals of the program are:
- Save lives: Eliminate avoidable hospital mortalities
- Safely reduce the cost of care: Reduce the costs for each patient’s hospitalization
- Deliver the most reliable and effective care: Ensure that patients receive every recommended evidence-based care measure
- Improve patient safety (year two measure): Prevent incidents of harm in more than 30 categories, including healthcare-acquired infections and birth injuries
- Increase satisfaction (year two measure): Improve the patient’s overall care experience and loyalty to the care providing facility
After the first year savings are estimated at$800 million and 8,000 lives. That is a pretty staggering amount of savings. Is your hospital a QUEST hospital? If so, have you noticed a change in how you deliver care?
Preventing Rehospitalizations audio conference on Monday!
Thought I’d highlight a fantastic program HCPro is offering next Monday from 1pm-2:30pm. The audio conference, titled Preventing Rehospitalizations: Engage Your Hospital and Healthcare Community, features two knowledgeable speakers.
Amy E. Boutwell, MD, MPP, director of strategic improvement policy for the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) will lead off the audio conference discussing the many factors that contribute to high rates of rehospitalization, some ongoing projects that have been working to reduce the number of readmitted patients, and the IHI’s recently launched STAAR initiative, which stands for STate Action on Avoidable Rehospitalizations. The second speaker, Margaret Namie, RN, BSN, MPH, CPHQ, vice president of quality at Mercy Health Partners of Southwest Ohio, will share her insights into creating a program for preventing rehospitalizations in heart failure patients.
I hope you consider listening in, it is going to be a great audio conference.
For more information, or to register for the audio conference, click here.
IHI launches online component of Improvement Map
Earlier this week, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) launched the online tool component of its Improvement Map, which was announced at IHI’s December 2008 National Forum (and I’m sure many of you have waiting in anticipation since then). The Improvement Map is a collection of processes that ultimately determine how a healthcare organization functions. The processes are broken down by domain (type of processes) and by aim (corresponding with the Institute of Medicine’s six aims for improvement). Users also have the option of customizing the Improvement Map so only the processes in which they are most interested appear when they log on.
This comprehensive resource looks to be an asset to the field. Many of you reading may be involved with one or many of the IHI’s existing initiatives and I’m sure you’ll find this new online component of real value. Not only does the Improvement Map offer guidance on many specific topics, it also provides resources, information, and points users in the direction even more information outside of its confines if you so desire.
Joint Commission releases document on hand hygiene adherence
I’m sure many of you have had trouble not only getting staff members to comply with your facility’s hand hygiene rules, but also measuring their compliance, which can be just as tricky. Do you measure by observing secretly, by surveying staff members, or by product use? Guidance has finally come in the form of a 232-page document released by The Joint Commission yesterday. The monograph offers a more standardized framework to measuring hand hygiene compliance and offers guidance on when, why and how to measure how well staff members are adhering to proper hand hygiene protocol.
The document includes examples of measurement methods, and came to fruition after a two-year collaboration with a number of organizations, including the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, Inc. (APIC), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA), the World Health Organization (WHO), the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), and the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases (NFID).
Update to IHI Surgical Sprint post on 3/31
I wanted to clarify some of the information I had in my original posting about the IHI’s Surgical Sprint, posted on March 31. I originally stated that the modified checklist that combined the World Health Organization (WHO) checklist with some of the requirements in the Universal Protocol was developed by the IHI- I was wrong about that. The IHI posted that modified “USA” checklist to its Web site, but it was created by a team of people at the WHO during the IHI’s National Forum in December 2008.
Additionally, although there has been concern about Joint Commission-accredited hospitals using either the Universal Protocol requirements or the WHO checklist, they are meant to work in harmony. The intention of the WHO checklist was not to make hospitals choose between one or the other, but rather to offer hospitals guidance in making their surgeries safer and integrate with existing processes. Because the Universal Protocol covers many elements of the process prior to surgery that the WHO checklist does not, the two will not match up. The modified checklist can help American hospitals integrate the WHO checklist with certain steps of the Universal Protocol.
I apologize for these errors, and hope this posting clears up any questions.
Please see the IHI’s Surgical Checklist Sprint Web page for many resources on the topic.
