Listening to his son describe his job of organizing 350 volunteers to knock on 50,000 doors in Florida to get the candidate’s message out, Berwick had an epiphany of sorts. He realized that a targeted communications strategy similar to what’s used in political campaigns could have a tremendous impact on improving health care.
On the campaign trail
Using his son’s experience as a model, Berwick and his team of 100 from IHI started knocking on doors. They invited hospitals to voluntarily join their campaign called “100,000 Lives” to reduce patient injury. Together, they sought to create “a system that is safe, effective, patient-centered, timely, efficient, and equitable,” he says. Their goals were simple: no needless deaths, no needless pain or suffering, no helplessness, no unwanted waiting, and no waste.
Berwick says, “By the end of the day, we had over 3,100 hospitals signed up saying they were going to do it. So there was this massive response to this sort of call to arms to say we are going to make these changes.”
121,342 lives
At the end of the 18-month campaign, IHI announced that the program had exceeded its goal and estimated that 121,342 lives had been saved.
Some of their achievements included:
■■More than 25 of the participating facilities reported a year free of ventilator-associated pneumonia—a leading killer in hospital-acquired infections— proving that with proper standards, such complications are avoidable and not inevitable.
■■More than 1,500 of the participating hospitals now have rapid response teams to care for patients on the spot.
■■Thousands of hospitals are taking steps to significantly reduce hospital-associated infections and many of those are seeing record-low infection rates.
On a larger scale, Berwick says, “We learned that progress can be made.” Through the work of IHI and its 3,100 partner hospitals, a new standard of care is emerging. Building on the success of 100,000 Lives, IHI is expanding its efforts by leading the “5 Million Lives” campaign, which hopes to “protect patients from five million incidents of medical harm,” over a two-year time period. The new campaign will involve more hospitals, reach more patients, and ultimately seek to establish a new national standard of care.
Prize money put to good use
For his efforts with IHI, Berwick was awarded the prestigious Purpose Prize, given to people who are taking on society’s biggest challenges in the second half of life. Along with the prize comes $100,000. The money will help Berwick take on his next great challenge. “I’m going to use it to help me get more deeply involved in global health issues,” he says. “I want to be able to extend my efforts further into Africa and the developing world. If you can get 10% reduction in childhood mortality in Ghana, you’ve overwhelmed anything you could ever do in the U.S.”
For more information about the Institute for Health Improvement, visit www.IHI.org.
For more information about the Purpose Prize, go to www.purposeprize.org.