The Improvement Map

Reliable Routes to Exceptional Hospital Care
James B. Conway, MS, Senior Vice President, Institute for Healthcare Improvement
Sue Gullo, Director, Institute for Healthcare Improvement

The improvement map tool is available to all users of IHI.org and can provide different levels of support to participating hospitals.

There is frequently disconnect among healthcare leaders regarding the importance of perinatal care and OB admissions are often the largest ER admissions. Bridging the gap between executive and frontline decisions is a common theme throughout the improvement map processes and approaches. The Improvement Map has the capacity to engage people in IHI in short-term projects with achievable results.

The map will help hospitals improve patient care by focusing on a set of process improvements critical to achieving highest performance levels in the areas that matter most to patients. It involves structure, process and outcomes aspects of reducing harm, mortality, cost per case, and improving patient satisfaction and equity. The three main initiatives on the improvement map are: patient care, cross-cutting support and leadership management. Users can select the purpose that they would like to focus on and then the tool will highlight the processes needed to make sense of the many complex and competing demands

We must view leadership as a process opposed to an office or title. There are twelve processes of leadership that fall into the following larger processes of:

1. Set Direction and Aims
2. Build Will for Improvement
3. Generate Ideas
4. Execute Change
5. Establish the Foundation for Improvement

Governance, executive leadership and clinical leadership must come together to break new grounds and achieve transformational change.