Getting Started

​The first steps in working to improve the health of a population; enhance the patient experience of care (including quality, access, and reliability); and reduce, or at least control, the per capita cost of care include:

  • Conduct an organizational self-assessment in order to understand where you are on the Triple Aim journey
  • Understand what is involved in planning and leading a Triple Aim effort in your organization or community
  • Begin to collect data that reflects the elements of the Triple Aim

 

Suggested Resources for Getting Started

Design of a Triple Aim Enterprise
This video explains five components of a Triple Aim initiative: Focus on individuals and families; Redesign of primary care services and structures; Population health management; Cost control platform; System integration and execution.

A Guide to Measuring the Triple Aim: Population Health, Experience of Care, and Per Capita Cost
This IHI white paper provides a menu of suggested measures for the three dimensions of the Triple Aim. The menu is based on a combination of the analytic frameworks presented in the paper and the practical experience of the organizations participating in the IHI Triple Aim prototyping initiative. The suggested measures are accompanied by data sources and examples. The paper also describes how the measures might be used along with increasingly specific, cascading process and outcome measures for particular projects to create a learning system to achieve the Triple Aim.

Populations, Population Health, and the Evolution of Population Management: Making Sense of the Terminology
The idea that the successful health and health care organizations of the future will be those that can simultaneously deliver excellent quality of care, at lower total costs, while improving the health of their population is taking hold. Ninon Lewis, a leader of IHI’s Triple Aim programs, helps bring clarity to the definitions of "population," "population health," and "population management".

A Primer on Defining the Triple Aim
The words "Triple Aim" and the terms that are part of its lexicon are often misused. This primer offers practical guidance on how to make sense of and use population-focused terminology and Triple Aim terminology (including “Triple Aim,” “IHI Triple Aim,” and “IHI Triple Aim Initiative”).

Pathways to Population Health
A collaboration among five organizations including IHI, Pathways to Population Health aims to help health care organizations accelerate their individual and collective efforts to improve health, well-being, and equity within communities.  


More Resources >>