Post-Surgical Mortality: Addressing Africa's Silent Health Epidemic

Millions of people die each year from complications after surgery. Despite post-surgical mortality being the third largest cause of death across the world — more than AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, or childbirth combined — very little funding or research goes toward solving this problem.

It's not the surgery itself that is the cause of mortality. Patients are dying because we don’t have solutions that help medical staff identify and respond to patients in distress following surgery.

IHI has a proven solution that can reach all patients in need. No new drug or device is needed, just nurses and doctors providing the right care, at the right time, for every patient after surgery. 

By co-designing new patient care systems and developing new skills and tools, 7 hospital teams in 4 African countries built a new model of care that decreased deaths after surgery by 36 percent.

Our audacious goal is to scale up this new model to hundreds of large hospitals across Africa in the next five years. Partnering with researchers from University of Cape Town and an existing network of hospital practitioners across Africa, we are refining the care model to make sure it can be scaled with minimal external support. We are now seeking funding to undertake an ambitious expansion of this initiative. With further funding and support from in-country partners, we will engage over 200 hospitals in Africa to rapidly implement the model in the health systems of 20 countries. Working with country health systems and global health leaders and influencers, our audacious long-term goal is to spread this life-saving intervention across the globe.

These new game-changing models of care and scale up will save millions of lives in a neglected area of care.

IHI partners closely with leaders, managers, and frontline teams to diagnose root causes and process failures that underlie the current performance of your system. Your team will be equipped with resources, methods, and tools to test, learn, and adapt solutions to redesign systems for improved performance. 

We provide coaching and technical support in a longitudinal and sustainable manner that builds improvement science capability in your workforce while working toward outstanding results that matter to patients, families, communities, the workforce, and system leaders.

Reliance on only external verification of standards can lead to a hyper-reactive system with only modest effects on performance. IHI has developed the Whole System Quality approach, which is based on three interrelated quality activities — quality planning (QP), quality control (QC), and quality improvement (QI). This approach helps strengthen health systems to continuously learn and improve.
 

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To build capability for improvement science, organizations need to create the conditions and support required to produce the desired improvements or results.

IHI’s “dosing approach” for quality improvement capability helps clarify the varying level of QI expertise needed across an organization, and how to sequence the development of these key resources to meet your strategic aims. IHI’s model of building capability includes targeted training programs with ongoing coaching and mentorship. 

We can help your organization build improvement capability within one team or area as well as support organization-wide capability building — from the point of care to the highest levels of leadership, including point-of-care staff, service line leaders, safety and quality team members, patients and families, senior leaders, and board members.
 

Diagnostics bring IHI’s knowledge, experience, and expertise directly to your organization to provide an informed view of where an organization is in its improvement journey and a clear roadmap to achieve higher levels of performance.

IHI's proven diagnostic process identifies and analyzes your organization’s strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities. Diagnostics help focus improvement efforts to address challenges in a specific area and to accelerate progress toward embedding a system-wide culture of continuous improvement.

A team of IHI experts will visit your organization, assess the current state of performance, and work with leaders in your organization to articulate actionable recommendations for achieving system-wide improvement that are in line with your strategic goals and objectives.

Diagnostics help focus improvement efforts to address challenges in a specific area and to accelerate progress toward embedding a system-wide culture of continuous improvement.