What Is IHI’s “Triple Aim?” Founders Don Berwick, Maureen Bisognano Lay Out Campaign for Change

Don Berwick and Maureen Bisognano lived and breathed different
sides of the healthcare industry before starting the Institute
for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) – a $60 million not-for-profit
organization with 150 employees across more than 70 countries
that drives results in health and healthcare improvement
worldwide.


What most people don’t know is that Don and Maureen hatched the
idea for IHI while working together – Don as a research and
quality guide physician and pediatrician, and Maureen as a nurse
and hospital CEO. They would discuss each other’s work problems
in-depth from very different perspectives, but in a way that
helped facilitate actionable improvements.


In the mid-1980s, Don, Maureen, and a larger group started
meeting people from outside healthcare who understood how to
improve things systematically, without having to rely on
incentives. They began teaching people around them what they were
learning from different industries, and quickly understood that
it’s unfair to send a “changed” person back to an unchanged
organization. It became quickly apparent to them that it would
take a new breed of leaders, as well as people on the front
lines, to create long-term change in healthcare.


IHI was born with an aggressive goal, literally written on the
back of an envelope. Don and Maureen set out to solve six
problems in US healthcare, and engaged 2,000 hospitals and saved
100,000 lives. With the guidance of their children who
fortunately had political campaign experience, they started their
own campaign to change healthcare. Originally supported by the
John. A. Hartford Foundation, the IHI became a reality in 1991 –
and the rest is history.


In this episode of Healthcare is Hard: A Podcast for Insiders,
Don and Maureen draw upon their extensive industry experience to
cover a number of pressing topics with host Keith Figlioli,
including:


 



Achieving the “Triple Aim” in Healthcare – the Triple
Aim is the trifecta of achieving better care for individuals,
better health outcomes, and lower per capita costs. Don and
Maureen saw this happening in other industries and in
healthcare markets across the world. They talk about how they
took this aim and created a leadership alliance within IHI
where 40 organizations came together with a common goal of
achieving the Triple Aim.

 Healthcare’s Defects in Areas that Other Industries
Don’t Tolerate – among these areas are safety issues,
effectiveness, reliability, patient focus, coordination, waste
and delay, and most importantly, equity. Don and Maureen discuss
how they understood that people were aware of this in the
mid-1980s, but no one had a way to deal with it directly at the
time.

 The Will for Change in Healthcare – who needs
this inspiration and how can the will for change be built? As
Maureen explains, painting the story of a patient can help build
such inspiration, especially for senior-level executives who may
be a little further removed. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a
good or bad story; it’s about providing a background for these
ideas to grow.


The Next Big Things in Healthcare – telemedicine,
telehealth, global budgeting, and healthcare for millennials
are just some of the innovations Don and Maureen are excited
about. 



 


To hear Don Berwick and Maureen Bisognano talk about these topics
and more, listen to this episode of Healthcare is Hard: A Podcast
for Insiders.