To help hospitals improve quality and reduce costs, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement has released a free online tool that allows hospitals to find best practices, assess performance, and design quality improvement plans.
The IHI Improvement Map includes best-practice information on 70 processes of care, 40 of which can help hospitals to control costs. “The improvement map is meant to be a resource that hospitals and their leaders, clinicians, and others can go to, to help them organize and make sense of their own improvement efforts in a very complex terrain as they try to improve quality and decrease costs at the same time,” Dr. Donald M. Berwick, president and CEO of IHI, said during a webinar.
For example, a physician using the tool could seek information on preventing catheter-associated urinary tract infections. In addition to detailed information about that process, the map includes the cost, time, and difficulty involved with implementing the changes. It also provides information about the level of evidence to support the process.
More than 100 U.S. hospitals helped test a prototype of the Improvement Map and are already using it as part of their quality improvement projects, according to IHI, an independent not-for-profit organization focused on improving health care processes and systems. The organization began rolling out the tool more broadly in September, and interest has been strong. In only a few weeks, more than 8,700 people tried it out, Dr. Berwick said.
The Improvement Map focuses on quality information related to hospital processes of care, but IHI officials said they expect to expand the map to other areas such as ambulatory care and home health care.
The Improvement Map is already getting high marks from physicians and hospital officials. “This is a landmark resource that is going to help accelerate the activities of hospitals,” said Stephen R. Mayfield, senior vice president for quality and performance improvement at the American Hospital Association.
The tool gives hospitals a place to start on quality improvement regardless of their size or financial resources or how many projects they already have underway, he said. It will also help hospital officials to choose projects that will give them the best return on investment.
Dr. Nancy Nielsen, past president of the American Medical Association, said the effort by the IHI is a great example of how to move forward on quality improvement, without waiting for the government to do so.
“These are things that we can take on as a health care community throughout the country and in fact throughout the world where we have influence,” she said.