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: Success at the Right Speed: Learning from Toyota
WIHI: The Meaningful Methodology of Patient- and Family-Centered Care
WIHI: Momentum for Maternity of the Safest Kind
WIHI: The Next Wave of Reform for Medical Education
WIHI: The Health Care Tune-Up Show! Leading with Logic and Emotion
WIHI: Message to Managers: Crises Happen. Plan Ahead!
WIHI: Tipping the Scales: Fresh Ideas to Combat Obesity
WIHI: Adverse Events and Their Aftermath: SOS from Clinicians
WIHI: Gimme Housing, Not the ED: A New Campaign for Housing the Homeless
WIHI: Patient Safety Officer: One Person’s Title, Everyone’s Responsibility
WIHI: OpenNotes and the Electronic Medical Record
WIHI: All Hospitals in Favor of Saving Money: Say “Patient Flow!”
WIHI: Getting Down to Business…and Health Care Reform
WIHI: New Ways to Reduce Diagnosis Errors
WIHI: The Future of Nursing
WIHI: Quality Care During Advanced Illness: What Do Patients Want That Works?
WIHI: Run, Don’t Walk! The Urgent Need for Patient Safety
WIHI: Reducing Avoidable Visits to the Emergency Department
WIHI: The Medical Home
WIHI: Next Waves of Health Care Reform
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