Summary
- Take information and inspiration from these top picks to energize you for the new year.
As we launch into 2025 and plan for what lies ahead for health and health care, we are sharing the lessons and resources that have been most requested and essential to support your strategic plans.
We hope you find these Insights posts, resources, and publications useful, thought-provoking, and inspiring. Here, in no particular order, are IHI’s top picks to energize and inform your new year:
Taking Safety to the Next Level
- There is hope that generative artificial intelligence (genAI) may improve care safety and quality, lower costs, and enhance both patient and clinician experiences. However, there are also concerns that genAI may introduce new threats to patient safety. The IHI Lucian Leape Institute report, Patient Safety and Artificial Intelligence: Opportunities and Challenges for Care Delivery, describes three use cases for genAI applications in clinical care and includes recommendations and mitigation strategies.
- Two new CMS measures have taken effect to make hospital care safer for patients and older adults. Critical resources can help teams prepare for these measures and make care better and safer for all.
- Join like-minded professionals at the IHI Patient Safety Congress, bringing together people who are passionate about ensuring safe, equitable care for all. Gain practical tools to improve patient and workforce safety in your setting, build knowledge and skills to advance your patient safety career, and learn from patient and family advocates and experts in high-performing organizations. This year’s Congress will will take place during Patient Safety Awareness Week for the first time.
Foundations of Improvement
- Hands-on tools and resources to support quality improvement and safety remain among the most-downloaded items on IHI’s website. At the top of the list is the SBAR (Situation-Background-Assessment-Recommendation) tool to organize information in preparation for communicating with a health care team member.
- The PDSA Worksheet is useful for documenting a test of change. This and nine other essential tools are included in the Quality Improvement Essentials Toolkit.
Leadership and Trust
- Could health care thrive if leaders treated trust and teamwork as carefully as they manage finances? Thomas Lee, Chief Medical Officer at Press Ganey, joined the Turn on the Lights podcast to discuss the role of social capital in fostering trust, teamwork, and effective patient care within health care organizations.
- Professor Lewis Grossman discussed the history of the US relationship to health care with former CEO of IHI Dr. Kedar Mate, and IHI President Emeritus and Senior Fellow Don Berwick. He explored the fluctuations in trust in the medical establishment over time and the importance of balancing individual choice with scientific rigor.
Join like-minded professionals at the IHI Patient Safety Congress
Advancing Equitable, Patient-Centered Care
- The Quintuple Aim for Health Care Improvement expands the original Triple Aim (improving population health, enhancing the care experience, reducing costs) beyond the "quadruple aim" (addressing clinician burnout) to a "quintuple aim" that includes advancing health equity as an imperative. Dr. Kedar Mate explains how “...we can think of the Quintuple Aim as points on a star — a North Star that may guide our health system forward."
- A new free guide, My Health Checklist, helps older adults think through all aspects of their health — what’s going well, what could be better, and their questions or concerns. It then helps them prioritize their top questions about what matters most to them. Share "My Health Checklist" with patients before their appointments to support more efficient, effective, and productive conversations for age-friendly care. The guide is available in English, Chinese, Portuguese, and Spanish.
- Michelle Browder joined the Turn on the Lights podcast to discuss art, activism, and health care, including ways to reimagine the future of gynecology and obstetrics in the US. She discusses her plans to create a museum in Montgomery, Alabama, combining art, history, and medicine to educate and inspire future health care professionals, emphasizing empathy, dignity, and the need for equitable care.
Fixing Systems, Not People
- A Shewhart chart tracks variation in processes over time, helping you to understand the variation and take appropriate action. A groundbreaking tool a century ago, it remains just as useful today, and it’s essential to any improvement journey.
- By designing and deploying technology-enabled workflows, IHI Care Operating System (IHI CareOS) connects clinical care, operations, informatics, and analytics in a holistic environment that prioritizes and accelerates learning and improvement. IHI CareOS focuses on fixing systems, not people — recognizing that individual performance is a property of the system.
We’re here to support you in your work in health and health care throughout the year. Stay informed about happenings at IHI, and update your email preferences to receive content that matters most to you: https://forms.ihi.org/email-preferences
