Leaders reflect on past achievements and the important work still ahead

The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) today is celebrating 30 years since its founding in 1991 as an organization with a bold vision: That everyone has the best health and care possible. Three decades later, the nonprofit remains committed to its mission to improve health and health care worldwide.

Since its founding, IHI’s work has been grounded in the science of improvement. The organization uses practical quality improvement (QI) methods – adapted from high-reliability industries, including manufacturing, aviation, and aerospace – to enable systematic and sustainable changes in health and care. Among its many achievements, IHI is credited with spreading QI best practices to thousands of health care delivery organizations and creating a worldwide community of improvers.

Committed to teaching, coaching, convening, and caring, IHI is well-known for its bold and impactful initiatives to effect improvement at scale. Examples include the 100,000 Lives Campaign and 5 Million Lives Campaign focused on patient safety, the development of the Triple Aim framework (better care for individuals, better health for populations, and lower per capita costs), and global programs to reduce tuberculosis, malaria, HIV/AIDS, cesarian section rates, and newborn mortality.

IHI Co-Founder, President Emeritus, and Senior Fellow, Donald M. Berwick, MD, MPP, reflected on the early days of IHI, “There was an amazing sense of excitement and shared discovery. We were excited to help people more than we ever thought we could before. There was an open door and shared intent driven by our intrinsic motivation to help each other improve. I don’t know a source of energy stronger than intrinsic joy. To this day, that joy and optimism fuel the organization and our people to make a meaningful difference around the world.”

Joy and optimism are on full display at IHI’s annual conference, the IHI Forum, which has become known as the place to go to receive inspiration and practical ideas for how to improve quality, patient safety and more recently, health equity. This convening, as well as IHI’s international Forums, informs, energizes, and supports health care professionals who benefit from the shared experiences and learnings of their colleagues.

IHI prides itself on its role as a developer of individual and organizational capability, notably creating the IHI Open School in 2008 when the organization took it upon itself to develop the first-ever formal curriculum for students, residents, and health professionals to learn about improvement science, quality, and safety. ​​​​​​​​Today, there are over a million people in more than 100 countries enrolled in the Open School online and in local chapters, with over 7 million courses completed to date.

IHI continues to scale its impact globally by working with partners in 42 countries, in nearly every region of the world, with aims to reach even further. Currently, IHI staff reside in 11 countries and 25 US states.

As an improvement organization, IHI is committed to innovating, testing, and sharing knowledge about what works, as well as learning from what doesn’t work. During its three decades in operation, IHI has continuously gained insight into what it could be doing better and has used that knowledge to shape its future priorities.

“As we think about the last 30 years in health care and IHI’s place in it, we must humbly acknowledge not only our achievements, but also our continued challenges,” said IHI President and CEO, Kedar Mate, MD. “Knowing that there can be no quality without equity, we recognize now that IHI did not do enough to prioritize equity in years past. We believe that work to improve patient safety and transform clinical effectiveness remains far from finished, and we must find better ways to build systematic resilience into our care systems today more than ever.”

When thinking about how IHI plans to meet current and future challenges, Dr. Mate concluded, “We will continue to build on what we do best — generating optimism, harvesting fresh ideas, and strengthening local capabilities. We will seek to advance improvement science methods and we will center equity in all of our work. IHI is not just adapting to changes in our world, but innovating and sparking action to drive the future changes to health and care that we need. We have so much to be proud of as an organization, and there is so much important work still ahead.”

Additional Resources:

- IHI Timeline

- One Minute of Major Milestones – 30 years of IHI video

About the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI)

The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) is an independent not-for-profit organization based in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. For 30 years, IHI has used improvement science to advance and sustain better outcomes in health and health systems across the world. IHI brings awareness of safety and quality to millions, catalyzes learning and the systematic improvement of care, develops solutions to previously intractable challenges, and mobilizes health systems, communities, regions, and nations to reduce harm and deaths. IHI collaborates with a growing community to spark bold, inventive ways to improve the health of individuals and populations. IHI generates optimism, harvests fresh ideas, and supports anyone, anywhere who wants to profoundly change health and health care for the better. Learn more at ihi.org.

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