Focus Area: System Transformation

Strengthen Systems to Deliver Quality Care

Co-design and manage systems to support sustained improvement in quality and outcomes. IHI collaborates with your teams to strengthen the culture, learning systems, and workforce capabilities that enable lasting transformation and measurable results throughout your organization.
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System Transformation

What is System Transformation?

Health systems are expected to improve quality, safety, and outcomes while meeting ongoing operational demands. Yet improvement is often not built into daily operations. Differences in capability, priorities, and resources result in uneven performance and results that are not consistently maintained.

System transformation addresses this gap by taking a holistic view and integrating quality planning, quality control, and quality improvement into a coordinated approach that strengthens how care is delivered, measured, and improved across the organization.

IHI supports system transformation by pairing two complementary frameworks: the Framework for Safe, Reliable, and Effective Care and the Psychology of Change Framework.

Why It Matters

Why System Transformation Matters

IHI collaborates with your teams to strengthen the culture, learning systems, and workforce capabilities that enable lasting transformation and measurable results throughout your organization.

Organizations that pursue system transformation are better equipped to:

  • Build a shared sense of purpose, so quality becomes a collective, organization-wide commitment.
  • Apply systems thinking to understand interdependence and address root causes instead of symptoms.
  • Create opportunities for collective learning and dialogue, where teams can surface challenges and generate new ideas safely and openly.
  • Strengthen reflection and personal inquiry, helping individuals recognize assumptions and adopt more adaptive ways of thinking.
Delivery Approach

How IHI Delivers System Transformation

IHI partners with health systems to drive meaningful, sustainable transformation by combining proven improvement methods with innovative solutions that connect strategy to execution.

IHI Care Operating System (IHI CareOS)

IHI CareOS connects clinical care, operations, and analytics in real time helping care teams reduce variability, improve outcomes, and address the root causes of clinician burnout.

Discover IHI CareOS 

Whole System Quality

From governance to frontline care, IHI implements a holistic approach to quality management that aligns system-wide goals, builds improvement capability, and supports continuous, sustained progress.

Explore Whole System Quality 

Resources

Explore System Transformation Resources

Explore how IHI’s frameworks and resources can advance system transformation throughout your organization.

Ready to Transform Your System for Lasting Results?

Partner with IHI to achieve measurable improvement across your organization.

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