What if health care delivery in the United States aimed to be perfect? What would it look like? We now have some preliminary answers, thanks to a project known as Pursuing Perfection — funded by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and led by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI).

The work of Pursuing Perfection, which began in 2001, is anchored by a shared desire to totally transform health care delivery. There are 13 participants in the US and Europe and their efforts, taken as a whole, offer some of the best evidence yet that fundamental improvement in patient care is possible across and within a wide range of health systems. Most important of all, the Pursuing Perfection sites have learned that the pursuit of perfection, or aiming high, raises the bar on health care performance and leads to clinical and operational results once considered out of reach. 

 HealthPartners awarded the National Quality Forum's 2007 National Quality Healthcare Award

Minneapolis-based HealthPartners is the 14th recipient of the National Quality Forum (NQF) annual National Quality Healthcare Award. The NQF award is conducted in partnership with Modern Healthcare magazine and is underwritten by the Cardinal Health Foundation.

HealthPartners was congratulated on their continuous strive for quality improvement and accountability by successfully using performance measurement to drive improvements in quality and efficiency. Their ability to foster a culture of transparency and accountability to patients and the community was also recognized.

Read more about the award

Highlighting the work of three Pursuing Perfection teams in Remaking American Medicine, a PBS four-part television series

Remaking American Medicine describes efforts to bring about dramatic change in the US health care system — to make it safer, more effective, and patient- and family-centered. Two of the Pursuing Perfection teams are featured in the series as described below.

• Improving how care is delivered with the help of state-of-the-art IT systems at Hackensack University Medical Center is featured in Program Two: “First Do No Harm”
  
• Dramatically improving the care for patients with chronic conditions in Whatcom County is featured in Program Three: “The Stealth Epidemic”
  

Detailed program descriptions and local broadcast information are available at http://www.remakingamericanmedicine.org/ and at http://www.pbs.org/remakingamericanmedicine

IHI invites you to read about all of the Pursuing Perfection projects to learn about impressive results in safety, mortality, and costs. You’ll recognize themes and concepts that are already spreading beyond these core sites:  shared care plans, composite measures, leverage points for senior leaders, and multidisciplinary rounds. The revolutionary ideas generated by the Pursuing Perfection work are now driving improvement agendas far beyond this group of pioneers.