CHAMPIONS OF CHANGE
Donald Berwick, MD, MPP, Founder, President and CEO of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement![]() Last year Dr. Berwick announced what even he acknowledges is probably his organization’s most ambitious project, the 100,000 Lives Campaign. His premise was simple: challenge hospitals to eliminate the estimated 98,000 deaths caused by medical errors in American hospitals each year. “When I announced the campaign, I knew we were walking out on a limb. We were proposing to do something bigger than we had ever done. I didn’t know if hospitals would sign on to the campaign because they may not want to admit there are needless deaths.” According to Dr. Berwick, the 100,000 Lives Campaign is a results-oriented project on an immense scale that was created to demonstrate what can happen when hospitals are committed to quality improvement. Says Dr. Berwick, “The response to the “100,000 Lives” campaign has been overwhelming. It’s a total surprise to me, and the most inspiring experience of my whole professional career.” More than 3,037 hospitals have committed to participate, representing 92 percent of the hospital beds in America. In addition, 74 percent of hospitals are reporting their mortality data directly to IHI. This level of reporting astounds Dr. Berwick, since most hospitals are reluctant to release such information unless required by law or a government agency. “Hospitals don’t like to admit mistakes because they think many are not preventable. The feeling is that inevitably there will be deaths and injuries and the public needs to understand that things sometimes go wrong. But this doesn’t acknowledge that often deaths and injuries take place because of human or system error or a combination of both – both of which are preventable.” To launch the campaign, Dr. Berwick and IHI set about recruiting some of the most influential health care organizations in the country. Among those he convinced to participate are the American Medical Association; American Nurses Association; Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. The campaign encourages thousands of hospitals across the U.S. to make a commitment to implement the following actions within their facilities:
“I think patients’ families and consumers should be more involved in the patient safety movement. Frankly, at the risk of losing friends in health care, what we need is outrage. We need the public to say ‘no, I don’t want a health care system at any price, let alone close to two trillion dollars, which is going hurt me when it tries to help me.’ We need to hear that from the public.” |