During the past two years I have described the efforts of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) regarding the “Saving 100,000 Lives Campaign.” Our three Peoria hospitals which participated are very pleased to report that 122,000 lives were actually saved in hospitals throughout the U.S. between December 2004 and June 2006. According to IHI’s website, “The 3,100 hospitals that participated in this initiative achieved a remarkable goal. Through their work on the Campaign’s interventions, combined with other national and local improvement efforts, these facilities saved an estimated 122,000 lives in 18 months. Along the way, nothing less than new standards of care began to emerge. Healthcare will never be the same—and the work continues.”
The work that continues is the “5 Million Lives Campaign,” which began in December 2006 and will go through December 2008. Its full title is “Protecting 5 Million Lives From Harm.” As a physician, I’ve sworn to uphold the Hippocratic Oath in caring for all of my patients, with one of the basic tenets being “do no harm.” The IHI has seized on this principle because its research during the past several years indicates that nearly 15 million instances of medical harm occur in the U.S. each year—a rate of over 40,000 per day. Hospital-acquired infections, adverse drug events, surgical errors, pressure sores and other complications are all too commonplace.
According to IHI’s President and CEO Donald Berwick, “To achieve this, we aim to enlist at least 4,000 U.S. hospitals in a renewed national commitment to improve patient safety faster than ever before. The 5 Million Lives Campaign challenges American hospitals to adopt the following 12 changes in care to save lives and reduce patient injuries:
The six interventions from the 100,000 Lives Campaign:
- Deploy Rapid Response Teams…at the first sign of patient decline.
- Deliver Reliable, Evidence-Based Care for Acute Myocardial Infarction…to prevent deaths from heart attacks.
- Prevent Adverse Drug Events…by implementing medication reconciliation.
- Prevent Central Line Infections…by implementing a series of interdependent, scientifically grounded steps.
- Prevent Surgical Site Infections…by reliably delivering the correct perioperative antibiotics at the proper time.
- Prevent Ventilator-Associated Pneumonia…by implementing a series of interdependent, scientifically grounded steps.
New interventions targeted at harm:
- Prevent Harm from High-Alert Medications…starting with a focus on anticoagulants, sedatives, narcotics and insulin.
- Reduce Surgical Complications…by reliably implementing all of the changes in care recommended by SCIP, the Surgical Care Improvement Project.
- Prevent Pressure Ulcers…by reliably using science-based guidelines for their prevention.
- Reduce Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) Infection…by reliably implementing scientifically proven infection control practices.
- Deliver Reliable, Evidence-Based Care for Congestive Heart Failure…to avoid readmissions.
- Get Boards on Board…by defining and spreading the best-known leveraged processes for hospital boards of directors, so that they can become far more effective in accelerating organizational progress toward safe care.
Again, all three Peoria hospitals are actively involved in reporting our data to the IHI. IBI
