The future of IMPACT: Day Two

James B. Conway, MS, Senior Vice President,
Institute for Healthcare Improvement

Some of the most striking events occurring in the healthcare industry are among our own organizations. Stories posted to the blogs and healthcare magazines enhance the ability of the healthcare system to move the policy agenda forward but our goal should be to get good news stories to the attention of the greater media -- we have to make sure the nation knows how we are breaking new grounds! We need to get the right news in the media to allow the public to ask questions to drive public policy. Fortunately, patient safety may finally be getting high enough on the healthcare reform agenda to make it into the conversations in Washington.

There seems to be a lot of optimism in this “transitional period” during which the focus of the nation is on financial security. We can be confident that we will need policy redesign in the near future in order to move forward with changing the healthcare system. Everything that we can do to make our work Leaner, safer, and making the patient a major player will be useful; we no longer have the luxury to leave cost containment out of the values that our organizations focus upon.

There remains a huge opportunity in the US for the general public to be involved in this debate. Jim Conway suggests that perhaps we could get involved with the writers of television shows to get the storylines of patient safety risks on the agenda. WIHI was recently launched to provide weekly stories about how different organizations are collaborating to improve care and enhance dialogue on many relevant topics.

Despite possessing complicated internal businesses, our organizations need to have the capability to connect with business customers and other clients who purchase our services. We deal with hundreds of organizations, both government and private enterprise, that are paying the bills for our services and we need to have interaction with these stakeholders.

In Massachusetts, IHI has formed a patient safety committee on health reform. The group understands the need to focus on safety across the continuum of private doctors offices, nursing homes, in home care in addition to within hospitals. Additionally, consumer will likely play a huge role in how the issue of safety emerges. The state also has an aim to answer “Do What? By When?” prior to setting up roadmaps for long term planning. This aim is directly tied to the mission of providing safe, efficient, timely, effective, equitable care.

“It’s time to not just think out of the box, but out of the building,” Berwick tells us of the importance of building up community linkages. When we’re trying to manage improvement at the hospital level it becomes critical to “connect the front office to the front line.” This is one of the biggest challenges because executive leadership must understand the work that goes on at the front line and vice versa.