IHI’s 21st Annual National Forum Print

ihi_logo.jpgThis year’s 21st Annual IHI National Forum, held in Orlando, FL was eventful with an abundance of helpful information.  Palmetto Health was recognized during Don Berwick’s Opening Key Note address for having cut its Hospital Standardized Mortality Ratio in half. 

IHI’s Open School had its 2nd Annual Congress with individuals representing chapters from all over the world.  All of South Carolina’s three chapters (Clemson, Medical University of South Carolina, and the University of South Carolina) were well represented.  Open School is comprised of 169 Chapters on 181 campuses throughout 39 states and 24 countries.

Certification in Quality and Patient Safety should be available through the Open School’s free online courses at the end of Jan 2010.  Continuing Education credits should also be available for those individuals that currently have degrees but may need to brush up on Quality and Patient Safety.  For more information on the IHI’s Open School visit: http://www.ihi.org/IHI/Programs/IHIOpenSchool/ or email Kimberly Hubbard at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it to find out how you can participate in your local Open School Chapter.

Paul Levy, President and CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, MA, led a very dynamic discussion on social media and how it has helped his facility in their transparency.  Using social media has helped his facility show “real outcomes in real time”.  You can learn more about Paul Levy by following his blog at http://runningahospital.blogspot.com/. 

Don Berwick and Tom Noland led a minicourse entitled Better Care-Lower Cost that was an outstanding full day which built on the IHI’s Triple Aim and proposed a direction for the future of healthcare in the U.S. which addresses cost, coverage, and quality.
Highlights included:

  • The Triple Aim-focuses on population health, per capita cost, and experience of care
  • The US spends $1,645 more per capita on health care than peer countries
  • The US spends more on health care than on food
  • “It’s our money” was a pervasive theme both during this session and the Forum
  • Design for a better system is best done at a local/regional level, ideally in communities with a population of 500,000 (Atlanta, Portland, Tucson) since all needed health care components are present; many health determinants are attributes of a region; and common values, solutions, and platforms are possible in a community of this size
  • The National Priorities Partnership’s waste reduction targets would result in significant savings (inappropriate medication use, unnecessary lab tests, unwarranted care-maternity care interventions, diagnostic/surgical procedures, unnecessary ED visits and hospitalizations, inappropriate non-palliative services at end of life, elimination of potentially harmful preventive services with no benefit)
  • Reduce regional variation in readmissions (SC is in the second lowest of 4 groupings, with a readmission rate of  18.1%)
  • Six areas of active work to increase value/decrease costs: more effective and expanded primary care, end of life, control of use of technologies, address ways to decrease high utilizers and “frequent fliers,” improvement of flow, chronic disease management
  • Learn from other countries on the integration of health and health care: Example-Jönköping County in Sweden has an obesity initiative which includes a “walking bus.” The children are walked to school instead of riding a bus and the cafeterias serve healthy food.
  • Better education for community and professionals about end of life advance directives and options such as hospice and palliative care programs
  • Pilot projects needed to build regional solutions for population areas of approximately 500,000


Maureen Bisognano and Bernard Crump led Building Strong Connections Between Cost and Quality: New Tools for Financial and Clinical Leaders which discussed projects and initiatives to improve quality and decrease cost and a very simple but powerful tool for drilling down to the reason behind readmissions was presented.  They were also able to demonstrate how IHI’s Improvement Map’s focused agenda for the CMS never events and hospital-acquired conditions was demonstrated.

To attend next year’s exciting 22nd National Forum visit IHI’s website.