The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) has opened its 30th National Forum on Quality Improvement in Health Care in Orlando, Florida, with more than 5,000 people in attendance from all over the world.
IHI, a recognized leader in health and health care improvement worldwide, convened this year’s National Forum (December 9–12, 2018) to highlight innovative thinking and methods that are bringing about improved outcomes for patients and communities. Sessions are focused on 10 topic tracks, including improving health equity, concepts and methods in improvement science, moving from volume to value in health care, and practicing person-centered care.
“This year’s Forum demonstrates the willingness of so many people to look outside their own organizations to learn new approaches for addressing health care’s thorniest problems,” said IHI President and CEO Derek Feeley. “In an increasingly global world, it’s worth recognizing that innovation and knowledge can come from anywhere — other organizations, other industries, other countries — and that those who share their successes can help others to succeed.”
Feeley will discuss these themes in a joint keynote session on Tuesday with Jason Leitch, National Clinical Director, Healthcare Quality and Strategy, Scottish Government. Other keynote speakers throughout the conference include Maureen Bisognano, President Emerita and Senior Fellow at IHI; Celine Gounder, MD, an internist, journalist, and author; Vania Deonizio, founder and Executive Director of Dancin Power; Mona Hanna-Attisha, MD, pediatrician and public health advocate; Don Berwick, MD, MPP, President Emeritus and Senior Fellow at IHI and former Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services; Gregory Boyle, founder and CEO of Homeboy Industries; and Zubin “ZDoggMD” Damania, MD.
Among the highlights of this year’s gathering are the release of new recommendations to help health care system trustees take their rightful place as stewards of health care quality. The Framework for Effective Board Governance of Health System Quality breaks new ground with the accompanying Governance of Quality Assessment (GQA) Online Tool, which outlines specific oversight responsibilities and concrete actions trustees can take to achieve them. The purpose of the assessment is to help trustees compare what they’re doing now to what they could be doing to oversee all dimensions of health care quality.
Prior research has shown a correlation between how well health care systems perform on quality measures — evidence-based processes that improve outcomes — and the board’s demonstrated focus on quality of care. Until now, however, resources and programs to educate and engage health care trustees have focused heavily on hospital settings and on patient safety. While those are still important concerns, broader attention is warranted.
“Our research revealed a real need for both better and more consistent guidance around the core health care knowledge in quality that governing boards should have and for a practical way to assess and extend board oversight to all quality domains,” said Beth Daley Ullem, MBA, lead author of the new framework and assessment tool. “Health care quality encompasses the entire care continuum, especially outpatient settings, and there is a growing need for trustee oversight of efforts to address areas such as population health; equity in care delivery, access, and quality; mental health and addiction; and the prohibitive costs of care for many patients and families.”
The new tools are meant to help health system trustees — some 80,000 in the US alone — make sense of this expanding universe of accountability and how to navigate it. The guidelines also help standardize and prioritize what, more precisely, trustees need to better master to ensure their organizations live up to stated commitments to high quality.
This work was a collaboration of IHI’s Research and Development team and Lucian Leape Institute (LLI), an initiative of IHI. Their research included in-depth interviews, literature review, and the insights of an expert panel. It was funded by an unrestricted educational grant from Medtronic, inaugural funder of LLI.
Changing the Narrative Around Substance Use Disorder
The IHI Open School is a learning community of more than 700,000 interprofessional learners from universities, organizations, and health systems around the globe who are building core skills in improvement, safety, system design, and leadership. Through online education, peer-to-peer support through the Chapter Network, and project-based learning, IHI Open School change agents are leading improvement in health and health care across the world. This year at the IHI National Forum, the Open School is launching the Recover Hope Campaign with the aim of improving the lives of 50,000 people affected by substance use disorders by 2020. This afternoon, health professionals will be invited to join this effort to raise awareness and reduce stigma, support prevention efforts, and improve treatment of substance use disorders around the globe.
Mapping the Pathways to Better Care for Patients with Complex Needs
Across the US, pioneering health care organizations are testing promising new models of care for individuals with complex medical, behavioral, and social needs. Many of these activities occur in isolation, however, with little opportunity for innovators to learn from each other and advance best practices collectively.
The Blueprint for Complex Care, a joint project of the National Center for Complex Health and Social Needs, the Center for Health Care Strategies, and IHI, provides a strategic plan to support these innovations and accelerate opportunities to improve care for individuals with complex health and social needs.
“The Blueprint seeks to advance professionalism and coordination in the field of complex care and encourages research and innovations based on collective need, rather than independent efforts that benefit relatively few,” said Kedar Mate, MD, Chief Innovation and Education Officer at IHI and a contributor to the new work. “Advancing this growing field can best be done through coordinated effort across organizations, communities, and states to align common goals.”
This new resource was developed with funding support from The Commonwealth Fund, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and The SCAN Foundation, and with input from stakeholders across the US.
The Psychology of Making and Sustaining Change
What factors prevent improvement initiatives from taking hold and spreading? Often the technical challenges are more easily surmounted than the challenges involving people and their motivation to change. A full-day session today highlights the IHI Psychology of Change Framework, which was developed to link the what and how of improvement work to the who and why — with the goal of helping teams sustain improvement and scale up change.
This new resource, along with the Blueprint for Complex Care and the Framework for Effective Board Governance of Health System Quality, will be discussed at a lunchtime event at the National Forum on Wednesday, December 12.
Journalists are invited to tune in to a livestream broadcast of four keynote presentations as well as five Spotlight Sessions.
For details on how to listen and watch, contact Joanna Clark at [email protected].
OPTIONS FOR MEDIA ACCESS
Journalists unable to travel to the 2018 IHI National Forum have the following options for hearing highlights:
Media Briefing
Monday, December 10, 2:00 PM ET
Call (781) 469-0157 and use the conference ID #16979333 to join the call.
Livestream Broadcast of Keynotes and Spotlight Sessions
For access, please contact Joanna Clark at [email protected]
WIHI Broadcast:
Thursday, January 17, 2019, 2:00 PM ET
Reporters are welcome to join this session, NEW Guidance for Governance of Health Care Quality: What Trustees Should Know and Do, by registering online.
About the Institute for Healthcare Improvement
The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) is an independent not-for-profit organization based in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. For more than 25 years, IHI has used improvement science to advance and sustain better outcomes in health and health systems across the world. IHI brings awareness of safety and quality to millions, catalyzes learning and the systematic improvement of care, develops solutions to previously intractable challenges, and mobilizes health systems, communities, regions, and nations to reduce harm and deaths. IHI collaborates with a growing community to spark bold, inventive ways to improve the health of individuals and populations. IHI generates optimism, harvests fresh ideas, and supports anyone, anywhere who wants to profoundly change health and health care for the better. Learn more at ihi.org.