Institute for Healthcare Improvement: Strategic Initiatives

Strategic Initiatives


	Appropriate Use of Specialty Care Services
	An ongoing Triple Aim initiative In the US, an estimated 30% of health care costs — nearly $700 billion — represents care that could be eliminated without reducing quality. This initiative seeks to develop the tools, techniques, and approaches necessary to improve the use of specialty services. IHI is currently seeking prototyping partners for this work.



	Chronic Care Initiative
	Ongoing The Chronic Care Initiative, one of the Indian Health Service’s three Director’s Initiatives, aims to reduce the prevalence of chronic conditions and their impact on American Indian and Alaska Native families, and to build a sustainable infrastructure for the spread of innovation and improvement throughout the Indian Health System.



	Developing Countries
	Ongoing IHI’s work in developing countries aims to broadly spread efficient and effective models of health care with the goal of reducing suffering and saving thousands of lives.



	How Do They Do That? Low-Cost, High-Quality Health Care in America
	Ongoing Health care leaders from a select group of high-performing regions of the US gathered in July 2009 in Washington, DC, at a meeting called "How Do They Do That? Low-Cost, High-Quality Health Care in America." The goal for this meeting and subsequent efforts is to build awareness among the American public and policy makers that successful models for achieving high-quality care at significantly reduced cost already exist in many regions and in many forms throughout the US.



	New Health Partnerships
	Completed The New Health Partnerships initiative seeks to use behavior change and health care system models to develop and test the most effective and efficient approaches for providing support to patients of a sort which enables and encourages greater patient self-management, while at the same time stimulating greater patient engagement in efforts to improve the design and delivery of health care services and systems.



	Pursuing Perfection
	Completed IHI was the National Program Office for Pursuing Perfection, a major initiative of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, designed to create models of excellence at a select number of provider organizations that are redesigning all of their major care processes.



	Reducing Avoidable Emergency Department Visits
	An ongoing Triple Aim initiative Retrospective review identifies that as many as 50 percent of all ED visits could have been avoided by care in other settings; this initiative seeks to discover and test new strategies to reduce these avoidable visits. IHI is currently seeking prototyping partners for this work.



	Safer Patients Initiative
	Ongoing Following a highly competitive UK-wide selection process, 20 hospitals representing the four countries of the UK have joined The Health Foundation’s prestigious Safer Patients Initiative. The hospitals have worked in pairs on the safety improvement work with technical assistance from IHI. The teams have built upon the impressive progress made by the four hospitals already involved in the initiative, learning from each other's successes and challenges.



	Scottish Patient Safety Programme
	Ongoing NHSScotland is the first health service in the world to adopt a national approach to improving patient safety. That is why acute hospitals across the country are taking part in a dedicated drive to ensure that patients receive even safer care. By reliably introducing evidence-based changes to practice, patient safety in Scotland will be significantly improved.



	STate Action on Avoidable Rehospitalizations (STAAR)
	Ongoing The STate Action on Avoidable Rehospitalizations (STAAR) initiative aims to reduce rehospitalizations by working across organizational boundaries in three states, initially — Massachusetts, Michigan, and Washington — and by engaging payers, state and national stakeholders, patients and families, and caregivers at multiple care sites and clinical interfaces.



	Transforming Care at the Bedside
	Completed Transforming Care at the Bedside (TCAB) is a unique innovation initiative of IHI and The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation that aims to create, test, and implement changes that will dramatically improve care on medical/surgical units, and improve staff satisfaction as well.



	Triple Aim
	Ongoing The Triple Aim is a new IHI learning initiative to better understand new models that can improve the individual patient experience and the health of entire communities, at a reasonable per capita cost.