Patient safety campaign enters new phase

A national project to reduce preventable harm to hospital patients has reached its conclusion, to be followed by a new initiative to improve patient safety while also saving money.

The 5 Million Lives Campaign, like the 100,000 Lives Campaign before it, sought to eliminate instances of unintended injury connected to medical treatment by instituting proven quality measures. Its sponsor, the Cambridge-based Institute for Healthcare Improvement, does not have numbers to measure the effect of its efforts over the last two years, IHI vice president Joseph McCannon said in a conference call with reporters today. But stories of reduced infection rates, improved medication management, and better cardiac care have been flowing in from the more than 4,000 hospitals participating in the campaign, he said from the group’s national forum on quality improvement in Nashville, Tenn.

"We see striking examples of success, but millions of patients are still being harmed every year," McCannon said. "We need to find a new way forward."

IHI’s next step is to add three new goals to the Lives Campaign list: to enlist hospitals’ financial leadership in improving patient safety while saving money, to prevent urinary tract infections linked to the insertion of tubes called catheters, and to adopt a surgical checklist that can save lives by standardizing risky processes. Together they are called the Improvement Map.

“We do know that improving care in many forms reduces cost,” IHI president and CEO Dr. Donald M. Berwick said in the same call. “It’s time to be lean, safe, and make sure every dollar we spend helps someone.”