WIHI - A Podcast from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement
Health & Fitness:Medicine
Date: February 9, 2012
Featuring:
Imagine this. You’re driving or walking or maybe even bicycling by your local hospital and you notice a big sign over the entrance that you’ve never seen before. Here’s what it says: “This hospital saved 5 Million Dollars in 2011 by improving patient care and reducing unnecessary procedures. We have returned the money to local employers, local unions, and the state.”
Sound preposterous? Hopefully not, because this is the kind of bold commitment and public declaration that Don Berwick and Gerry Shea would like everyone in health care to start thinking about, seriously. It’s just that urgent, they say, and they’ll explain why.
WIHI host Madge Kaplan welcomes Berwick and Shea to the program, fresh off Dr. Berwick’s 18 months implementing change at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), and building on Gerry Shea’s extensive knowledge of quality improvement and the promise of better care and lower health care costs for working Americans.
The problem is, we’re nowhere near there yet, especially where costs are concerned, and both Berwick and Shea believe one of the reasons is that there’s still too much of a disconnect between what better use of health care services and improvement initiatives can achieve, and what health care payers (Medicare and Medicaid, employers, individuals, etc.) are able to reap in return. As Berwick puts it, “Payers aren’t seeing it yet,” and this means that anyone footing the bill, and that’s pretty much all of us, continues to be squeezed in ways that society can’t afford.
So, what can dedicated legions of health professionals, already deeply immersed in improvement work, do differently or better? Berwick started to lay this out on December 7, 2011, at IHI’s National Forum. Berwick and Shea both say that one area ripe for review is the conceptual and often actual way in which health care organizations separate their quality and “lean” strategies, when these should be one and the same. Implementing greater efficiencies has everything to do with safety and better care, the two say. Getting this right would speed things up and generate greater savings. The question then becomes, where should the money go?
WIHI: Reports from the Frontlines of Effective Crisis Management
WIHI: Primary Care's (New) Pressures and Possibilities
WIHI: Health Care’s Newest Improvers: Patient and Family Advisors
WIHI: The Newest Innovator on the Block: Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation
WIHI: A Legible Prescription for Health Care
WIHI: Alert to Change: New Models for Residency Work Hours
WIHI: The Power of Specialty Care – and the Necessity to Use It Wisely
WIHI: The Patient Activist
WIHI: Finding the Will to Bend the Cost Curve
WIHI: Nursing’s New Roadmap: Education, the Workforce, and Health Care Quality
WIHI: The Leaders Needed for the Changes Health Care Needs
WIHI: The Power to Detect and Reduce Harm: IHI’s Global Trigger Tool and Adverse Events in the US
WIHI: Reducing Readmissions, Restoring Revenues: Making Good Care Count
WIHI: The Buzz about Medical Training: It’s (Slowly) Changing
WIHI: Leaders Never Stop Learning
WIHI: Against All Odds: Maternal Survival in Ghana and the US
WIHI: Unprofessional Behavior Not Permitted Here
WIHI: The Image of Better (Radiation) Imaging Practices
WIHI: Learning by Data and by Doing: Low-Cost, High-Quality Health Care in America
WIHI: Coaching’s the Thing for Primary Care Practice
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