Last month, the Centers for Medicare Kate Lally, Director of Palliative Care and Hospice Director at Care New England, which is integrating hospice and palliative care in its hospitals and home care agency; Jocelyn Moore, former deputy staff director for the Senate Finance Committee who was a key architect of provisions of the Affordable Care Act and whose boss, Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), introduced the earliest draft of the new law in the Senate Finance Committee in 1994; and Harriet Warshaw, Exe ... read full post

IHI Director Cory Sevin first experienced the powerful influence of social determinants of health decades ago when she worked as a community-based public health nurse. In this post, she describes how health care has come full circle as she’s learning about innovative partnerships between health care providers and their communities. Sevin is faculty at the IHI National Forum, where she is co-teaching Learning Lab L24, “Health System Design to Impact Social Determinants of Health” on Sunday, Decem ... read full post

Providing staff with quality improvement training has helped the Director of Quality at a large academic medical center reach the highest percentile in surveys of employee engagement.

One individual has been pioneering quality improvement in Mexico for more than 20 years. IHI board member Enrique Ruelas, the former Vice Minister of Innovation and Quality for the Mexican Ministry of Health, led the development of the country’s first quality strategy in 2000, which earned him the 2005 Transparency Award by the Mexican government and helped foster a movement for quality and safety in Latin America. He is now advising the Ministry on a new National Quality Strategy that builds on ... read full post

Shadowing – observing patients and families as they move through each step in their health care journey – is a well-established method for making care more person- and family-centered. In this post, Anthony DiGioia, MD, describes how shadowing is also used to increase value by reducing waste and cutting costs while simultaneously improving outcomes and the patient experience.