IHI Lucian Leape Institute

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Providing a Strategic Vision for Improving Patient Safety

The IHI Lucian Leape Institute (LLI) was formed in 2007 by the National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF, which has since merged with IHI) to provide a strategic vision for improving patient safety. Composed of international thought leaders with a common interest in patient safety, the LLI functions as a think tank to identify new approaches to improving patient safety; call for the innovation necessary to expedite the work; create significant, sustainable improvements in culture, process, and outcomes; and encourage key stakeholders to assume significant roles in advancing patient safety.

The LLI is named for Lucian Leape, MD, who served as the founding chairman and remains an active member. Dr. Leape was a member of the Institute of Medicine’s Quality of Health Care in America Committee, which published the seminal works in the patient safety movement, To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System (1999) and Crossing the Quality Chasm (2001).


Our Work

The IHI Lucian Leape Institute has focused on identifying and framing vital transforming concepts that require system-level attention and action. Members identified five critical concepts in a 2009 paper, Transforming healthcare: A safety imperative, published in Quality and Safety in Health Care (now BMJ Quality & Safety):

  • Medical education reform
  • Active consumer engagement in all aspects of health care
  • Transparency as a practiced value in everything we do
  • Integration of care within and across health care delivery systems
  • Restoration of joy and meaning in work and ensuring the safety of the health care workforce

Fulfilling the objectives embodied in these concepts is critical to moving the patient safety agenda forward. Between 2010 and 2015, the LLI published five reports in its series analyzing these concepts and recommending actions. In 2018, the members co-authored a paper assessing progress made in the US since 2009 and discussing ongoing challenges.

The LLI’s most recent work includes development of the IHI white paper, Framework for Effective Board Governance of Health System Quality, and convening the Salzburg Global Seminar, Moving Measurement into Action, which resulted in eight recommendations for standard methods of measuring, understanding, and improving the safety of patients across the care continuum.