Institute for Healthcare Improvement: Improvement Stories

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Spreading Changes

IHI.org has two types of Improvement Stories:

IHI.org Stories that describe the changes and results in specific organizations.
Improvement Project Reports from IHI.org users that describe improvement projects in their organizations.

We all learn from others' experiences testing and implementing changes in real settings — who should be on the team; what measures were tracked; which changes worked best or didn't work at all; and what lessons were learned.

Improvement Project Reports, submitted by IHI.org users, accelerate our learning. In the spirit of "all teach, all learn," we encourage you to share your Improvement Report with the IHI.org community. Please click the Submit an Improvement Report button below.

Choose the story types you would like to see:

Improvement Project Reports
IHI.org Stories

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A Network That Works! The 100,000 Lives Campaign Nodes
IHI is working with an extensive network of quality-focused organizations throughout the US to help hospitals achieve the goals of the 100,000 Lives Campaign. It’s a group effort that is in fact changing the world of health care, often in remarkable ways.

VISN 3: Sustaining Gains After the Collaborative
Veterans Integrated Services Network 3 (VISN 3) utilized Advanced Clinic Access (ACA) education strategies and developed a site visit model to sustain the gains achieved during an ACA Collaborative, achieve additional decreases in waiting times and spread innovation to other specialty clinics.

Leveraging IHI Participation to Achieve Critical Care Improvement Spread in A Multi-Hospital System
A system-wide Critical Care Collaborative was convened by Catholic Healthcare West (San Francisco, California, USA) modeled after the IHI Breakthrough Series Collaborative to achieve improvements in care systems in the intensive care setting resulting in reduction in ventilator-associated pneumonia rate, reduction in our catheter-related blood stream infection rate, improved compliance with all components of the ventilator bundle, reduction in ICU average length of stay and reduction in percentage of patients in the ICU greater than 7 days.

Improvement Report: VA Healthcare Network Upstate New York (VISN 2) Implements Advanced Clinic Access
VA Healthcare Network Upstate New York (VISN 2) has focused on measuring and improving waiting times and clinic timeliness, and has successfully implemented Advanced Clinic Access network-wide in nearly 1,300 clinics, for over 130,000 patients.

Best Practices for Shared Team Learning
"Knowledge transfer often needs to be a two-way street", says shared knowledge expert Nancy M. Dixon (Common Knowledge Associates, Dallas, Texas, USA).

Spreading the Gift of Life: Organ Donation Breakthrough Collaborative
Seventeen people die on average every day in the US while awaiting an organ transplant. A national initiative called the Organ Donation Breakthrough Collaborative is attempting to change that statistic. Launched in 2003, the Collaborative has demonstrated that the supply of healthy organs available to patients in need could be increased by 50 percent.

Health Disparities Collaboratives: Improving Diabetes Care in 3,400 Health Center Sites
In 1998 the Bureau of Primary Health Care (BPHC), a division of the US Department of Health and Human Services, teamed up with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement to form the Health Disparities Collaboratives to improve diabetes care for patients. The BPHC oversees programs that offer care to twelve million people who are underserved by the United States health care system — the underinsured and the uninsured.

Improving Coronary Heart Disease Care in the United Kingdom
A fourfold reduction in mortality and more than 800 lives saved over a two-year period. These are the results of a nationwide effort by the United Kingdom’s National Health Service to improve care for coronary heart disease patients.

Veterans Health Administration Spreads Access Improvements Far and Wide
Not many health systems operate in the type of fishbowl that the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) occupies. "When patients in private systems are unhappy, they might write to the medical director. Our patients write to Congress," says one VHA leader.

Improvement Report: Spread of Unit Briefings to Enhance A Culture of Safety
Iowa Health System (Des Moines, Iowa, USA) tested the use of Unit Briefings in one hospital to reduce the risk of medication errors and spread the change to 40 units, then to nine system hospitals within one year. The result: Adverse drug events were decreased by 75 percent in eleven months across all system hospitals.

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