Improvement Coach Professional Development Program
Improvement Coach Professional Development Program
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*Prices are listed in USD. Group prices are listed as per-person.
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Develop Improvement Knowledge and Skills to Coach and Facilitate Improvement Teams
Did you miss the last informational call? Watch the Recording & Review Slides.
Making the Case: Download the Justification Letter to provide high-level information on the Improvement Coach Professional Development Program to your leadership.
Agenda
This program consists of 13 live online sessions, each from 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM ET, 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 one hour to complete.
Improvement Coach August 2026 Agenda
Topics Covered
The Improvement Coach Program covers coaching individuals and teams on the science of improvement and coaching tactics specific to improvement teams. This program is highly interactive; participants can practice their learning with peers one-on-one and in small groups. Participants are also expected to practice with their teams back home regularly. A summary of topics covered includes:
- The science of improvement
- Deming's System of Profound Knowledge: Systems thinking, human psychology, theory of change, and understanding variation
- Quality improvement (QI) tools for understanding your system, gathering and organizing information, and understanding variation and relationships
- Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycles: planning, running and coaching
- Coaching in the context of improvement
- The role of an Improvement Coach
- Teamwork and communication
- Running effective meetings and making team decisions
- One-on-one coaching
- Opportunities to apply skills
- Practicing coaching
- Sharing learning and progress with your own team
Recommended Prerequisites
- Experience: Previous experience participating on or leading an improvement team
- Knowledge: prior improvement knowledge required:
or
- An equivalent level of learning from other organizations (e.g., ASQ, NQF, or a university-based QI program)
Improvement Project Recommendations
To get the most value from this program, participants are strongly encouraged to have a real, current project they can apply their learning to throughout the experience. Working on a live improvement effort allows concepts and tools to be practiced in real time, making the learning more practical, relevant, and immediately impactful. Participants who bring an active project often report deeper learning, greater confidence, and more tangible outcomes by the end of the program.
Ideal projects are:
- Based in your day-to-day work or home organization
- Meaningful to you or your team
- Scoped realistically so progress can be made during the program
- Open to experimentation, reflection, and iteration
Examples of Appropriate Projects Include:
- Identify a process that better matches and meets a patient or family need, even if patients or families have not expressly asked for it (e.g. test a process to assess long-term care residents' needs better).
- Improve a product, process, or service today, which will put you in a better competitive position (e.g. improve outcomes for patients with chronic conditions through self-management support that includes collaborative goal setting, action planning, and problem-solving).
- Fix a recent or recurring problem that all agree needs to be fixed to restore a process to the level it was designed to perform or to exceed expected performance.
Specific Examples of Past Projects Include:
- Increase community resident attendance in fitness programs
- Increase screening for behavioral health in primary care
- Increase student asthma medications in the school nurse's office
- Improve emergency department flow from admission to time in a bed
- Reduce appointment "no-shows"
- Reduce paperwork for patients (and increase patient and provider workflow and satisfaction)
- Reducing parental complaints regarding homework
- Reduce resident falls with harm
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.
Continuing education credits for this program are still being finalized and will be updated shortly.
This live activity includes required self-paced support activities. Participation in both the live sessions and the self-paced components is necessary to meet the learning objectives and is included in the total credit hours.
As a result of this program, attendees will be able to:
- Describe the science of improvement and use the Model for Improvement as a roadmap for improvement projects.
- Employ skills to coach improvement teams on developing, testing, and implementing changes, including identifying high-leverage change ideas and testing them using PDSA cycles.
- Explain how to use data for improvement, including how to use and interpret run charts and other key quality improvement tools.
- Develop skills in team facilitation, communication, decision-making, and understanding team culture.
- Apply just-in-time teaching of improvement skills to team members to advance the team's work.
- Plan how you will continue coaching your team and prepare yourself to coach subsequent teams.
- Identify concepts of implementation, sustainability, spread, and scale-up.
CE Instructions
To be eligible for a continuing education certificate, attendees must complete the online evaluation within 30 days of the continuing education activity. After this period, you will be unable to receive a certificate.
Continuing education credits will not be awarded for non-educational activities, including (but not limited to) meals, breaks, and receptions.
CE Planning Committee
- Patricia McGaffigan, RN, MS, CPPS, Vice President, IHI
- Michael A. Posencheg, MD, Chief Medical Officer, Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, and Attending Neonatologist, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
- Catherine Warchal, Project Manager, IHI
Disclosure: None of the planners, presenters, or staff for this educational activity have a relevant financial relationship(s) to disclose with ineligible companies whose primary business is producing, marketing, selling, re-selling, or distributing healthcare products used by or on patients.
Fees
Regular Rate: $5,495 per person
Group Rate: $4,671 per person
Organizations sending three or more people can receive a 15% Group Discount. To register a group, fill out the Group Registration form.
Please note: Eligible membership or scholarship discounts are automatically applied at registration. You’ll receive a confirmation email after checkout. Your invoice will be available to print from your online profile within 24 hours.
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
To apply for a scholarship, please complete the online Scholarship Application by July 30, 2026. IHI will not consider applications submitted after this date.
IHI will notify all applicants of their scholarship status by August 6, 2026.
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 scholarship applications are reviewed using the same scoring criteria. All awarded amounts are final.
Please note, scholarships are available for program registration costs only, and do not cover travel, food, or accommodation costs associated with attending a program.
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Logistics
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- Visit the IHI Education Platform to view program details and complete your registration for the training.
- Invoices can be found and paid through your My Account section.