Lisa Miller, an MPH student at Oregon Health and Sciences University, recently completed the IHI Open School Practicum. Her project focused on helping clinic staff at a primary care clinic document patients’ social needs in the electronic medical record, so that clinic staff could address them along with patients’ medical needs. The project was a success (by the end of the work, 100 percent of patients seen by behavioral health staff had their social needs documented in the designated chart loca ... read full post

Rachel Hathaway, MD, is an internal medicine resident at the Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA). During the last academic year, she and seven other residents participated in a pilot initiative to teach residents how to apply quality improvement methodology through hands-on, year-long projects. The group was fortunate to work with Dr. Maren Batalden — the daughter of legendary quality improver Paul Batalden — who served as mentor and course director. We asked Rachel some questions about the team’s e ... read full post

On a cold, dreary evening last December, the IHI Open School Chapter at Wright State University held a meeting to talk about the concept of quality improvement (QI) and its growing importance in medical professions. The Chapter Leaders hoped the event would expose students to the ideas of QI and to help them get involved in their own QI projects. Brian Patterson, one of the Chapter Leaders, said that their strategy worked “We were delighted at the questions and attentiveness of the audience. Man ... read full post

This April, the intrepid improvers of the IHI Open School’s West Coast Region held their first-ever conference, drawing about 160 students, professionals, and community members to Portland, OR. Student organizers from the IHI Open School Chapter of Portland State University and Oregon State Health and Science University, in collaboration with the West Coast Region, welcomed speakers from across the country to share their diverse experiences in health improvement, leadership, safety, system redes ... read full post

The IHI Open School Chapter at Brock University, in Ontario, Canada, is one of the most active in the Open School community. Recently, Brock University and its partners won a $41,000 grant to support an innovative elective they created to provide students with hands-on experience doing quality improvement projects with a nearby health system. Needless to say, winning such a large sum for quality improvement education isn’t a situation most Chapters find themselves in, so we reached out to Madely ... read full post