Courses

IHI Breakthrough Series College

IHI Breakthrough Series College: March 2026

Format:

In-Person & Online

Begins:

Mar 12, 2026

**Duration:

6 weeks

Fee:

$4,995

Groups of 3 or more:

$4,246

Registration Group Registration

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*Prices are listed in USD

**Plus one year of monthly calls after

What Is the Breakthrough Series College?

Challenges abound in health care, education, and social services, including staffing shortages, burnout, waste, and complex systems with unreliable processes. While effective solutions may exist, they rarely reach consistent implementation at the frontlines of care delivery, education, and community services. To fill this gap, IHI developed the Breakthrough Series Collaborative model in 1995 to offer an improvement methodology that empowers health care, education, and social service agencies with the tools to achieve meaningful improvements in quality and efficiency.

Learning Goals

Whether you are already planning a specific BTS Collaborative or are eager to learn how to identify when the right time is to leverage the methodology, the expert BTS College faculty will teach you the step-by-step process of launching, running, and closing a BTS.

Even if a traditional BTS Collaborative is not immediately in your future, participants find that the building blocks of the College can be very helpful in other improvement projects as well.

The College moves chronologically through the BTS process:

Selecting an effective and timely topic:
- Learn how to identify and choose relevant subjects that are ripe for a Collaborative.
Running a productive expert meeting:
- Gain skills to organize and facilitate meetings with subject matter experts to gather insights for building a strong Collaborative.
Selecting impactful faculty and staff:
- Understand how to choose content and context experts who can contribute effectively to the Collaborative.
Creating the technical content needed:
- Develop essential materials such as the charter, driver diagram, change package, and measurement strategy to guide the Collaborative.
Recruiting the right teams and engaging them in prework:
- Learn how to attract and prepare teams for effective participation, ensuring they are ready to contribute from the start.
Using and teaching the Model for Improvement:
- Apply this model as the execution model to drive continuous improvement and teach others how to use it effectively.
Facilitating dynamic Learning Sessions:
- Gain skills to lead engaging and productive learning sessions that foster collaboration and knowledge sharing.
Maintaining momentum in the Action Periods:
- Learn strategies to keep teams motivated, in action, and focused during the periods between learning sessions.
Assessing progress in the Collaborative:
- Understand how to evaluate the progress of the Collaborative and make course-correcting adjustments.
Guiding, closing, and evaluating the Collaborative:
- Learn how to successfully conclude the Collaborative, assess its impact, and identify lessons learned for future initiatives.

Faculty

Kelly McCutcheon Adams, MSW, LICSW, is a Senior Director at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and has been with IHI since 2004. She is the Director (and co-faculty) of the IHI Breakthrough Series College and the Director of the IHI Chief Quality Officer Professional Development Program. Ms. McCutcheon Adams has led and coached many BTS Collaboratives and has taught in the United States, Denmark, UK, and Australia. She is a medical social worker with experience in hospice, nursing homes, sub-acute rehabilitation, emergency department, and ICU settings. Ms. McCutcheon Adams served as faculty for the Organ Donation Collaborative of the US Department of Health and Human Services and for the Gift of Life Institute.

Sue Butts-Dion, s a quality improvement consultant with over 20 years of management consulting experience in health care. She successfully supports clients, including hospital systems and physician practices, in planning and implementing improvement objectives. Ms. Butts-Dion's practice areas include improvement planning, training, and group facilitation.

BTS Alumni Panel

Geoff Schierbeck, RN, is a Portfolio Liaison for Doctors of BC in Canada, a voluntary association of 14,000 physicians, residents, and medical students that aims to raise the standard of patient care in the province. Geoff serves as the Collaborative Director for the Surgical Patient Optimization Collaborative (SPOC) and is working with physicians in British Columbia to improve surgical care through quality improvement initiatives.

Juli Coleman, Ed.D, is currently the Chief of Improvement; School Networks for the CORE Districts. She leads a Network of over 40 high schools who are working together to change the life trajectories of students by transforming the 9th grade experience. Dr. Coleman coaches and builds the capacity of district and school teams on continuous improvement. She has worked in public education for over 30 years, which has spanned across K-12, regular and special education. She has worked in a variety of roles and schools including a Resource Specialist at an elementary school, Teacher on Special Assignment at a middle school, and a co-principal of a high school. Dr. Coleman has completed the Improvement Advisor course at IHI.

Attendee Take-Aways

The Breakthrough Series College is a hands-on, proven professional development program that teaches participants how to run effective Collaboratives to reduce harm and waste while putting patients, students, and clients at the center of the work.

BTS Collaboratives address critical areas in need of improvement like maternal morbidity, heart failure, high school readiness, intimate partner violence services, suicide prevention, sepsis, homelessness, literacy, primary care access, and more. Collaboratives typically span 12-18 months, engaging 10-100 teams focused on closing the gap between current practices and evidence-based best practices to improve outcomes for patients, students, and clients.

Participants gain the practical tools and knowledge to implement sustainable solutions in their unique environments, making this program valuable for diverse professionals from multiple settings around the globe.

Agenda

This program consists of 4 live online sessions, 2 two-day in-person sessions, and self-paced activities to be completed outside of the live sessions. Self-paced activities between sessions are required and should take no longer than five hours to complete in total across the College.

Breakthrough Series Agenda

Continuing Education

In support of improving patient care, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement is jointly accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE), and the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC), to provide continuing education for the health care team.

CE credits for this offering are pending.

The Institute for Healthcare Improvement designates this blended learning activity for a maximum of 28 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity. This activity may also be applicable for other professions that accept AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™.

A growing list of countries accept ACCME-accredited education.

As a result of this program, attendees will be able to:

Operate a Collaborative improvement project to improve processes and outcomes in clinical/healthcare and other settings.
Demonstrate the ability to teach and use the Model for Improvement (in the context of Collaborative improvement projects) for clinical/healthcare and other improvement projects.

Scholarships

IHI is pleased to offer a limited number of free and 25% scholarships to assist with program registration costs for those working in:

Independent, United States Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) that are not affiliated with a hospital or health system
Critical Access Hospitals
Independent practices with fewer than 20 physicians
Hospitals with fewer than 50 beds
Members of America's Essential Hospitals
501(c)(3) organization with a defined operating budget of less than $5 million, serving community-based populations
Ministries of Health
Faith-based health institutions
Skilled Nursing Facilities

All Scholarships are reviewed on an individual basis. If multiple individuals from the same organization wish to apply for a scholarship, everyone must submit an application. Group discounts are also available, see information above.

To ensure equal distribution of funds, all scholarships applications are reviewed using the same scoring criteria. All awarded amounts are final.

To apply for a scholarship, please complete the online Scholarship Application by February 25. 2026. IHI will not consider applications submitted after this date.

IHI will notify all applicants of their scholarship status by March 4, 2026.

GSA Pricing For US Government

IHI offers GSA pricing for US government employees to enroll in this educational program. For more information and pricing, see IHI's GSA schedule.

Cancellations, Refunds, Substitutions

Registration Fee of $2,950 or more

Payments: Full payment is due 60 days before the start of the program. If payment in full is not received within 60 days prior to the program start date, IHI will notify you and cancel your registration.
- Credit card payments: Enter your credit card information online during the registration process, or call the IHI Customer Experience Department to process payment over the phone.
- Check payments: Please mail a copy of the invoice with your check made payable to IHI.
Cancelations: For cancelations made within 45 days before the start of a program: Registration fees are fully refundable if a written request is received by info@ihi.org on or before 45 days before the start of the program.
Refunds: IHI will issue all refunds in the original payment type (credit card or check) within 30 days. Registrations received after 45 days or less before the start of the program are not refundable.
Substitutions: One attendee may be substituted for another at any time by emailing info@ihi.org.

Our Guarantee to You

If for any reason you are not completely satisfied that your attendance in an IHI educational program is a valuable experience, IHI will gladly refund your registration fee per the policies noted above. Please note that due to unforeseeable circumstances, last-minute changes in program titles, speakers, or presentations may be unavoidable.

Need Help?

info@ihi.org

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