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Protecting 5 Million Lives from Harm Campaign

MPRO partners with VHA (Voluntary Hospitals of America) as Michigan’s Node

The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) announced a national campaign to dramatically reduce incidents of medical harm in U.S. hospitals. The 5 Million Lives Campaign will ask hospitals to improve more rapidly than before the care they provide in order to protect patients from 5 million incidents of medical harm over a 24-month period, ending December 9, 2008.

The new Campaign builds upon the success of the 100,000 Lives Campaign, in which 3,100, including more than 70 in Michigan, participating hospitals reduced inpatient deaths by an estimated 122,000 in 18 months through overall improvement in care, including improvement associated with six interventions recommended by the initiative.

Leaders from America’s Blue Cross and Blue Shield health plans, the American Hospital Association (AHA), the American Nurses Association (ANA), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), have all pledged that their organizations will act as national champions and clinical advisors for the critical work ahead.

“We can and we will, equip all willing health care providers with the tools they need to make the motto, ‘First, do no harm,’ a reality,” said Donald Berwick, MD, MPP, IHI President and CEO.  HI estimates that 15 million incidents of medical harm occur in U.S. hospitals each year.  This estimate of overall national harm is based on IHI’s extensive experience in studying injury rates in hospitals, which reveals that between 40 and 50 incidents of harm occur for every 100 hospital admissions. 

With 37 million admissions in the United States each year (according to the AHA’s National Hospital Survey for 2005), this equates to approximately 15 million harm events annually - or 40,000 incidents of harm in U.S. hospitals every day.

The 5 Million Lives Campaign will promote the adoption of 12 improvements in care that can save lives and reduce patient injuries, and it aims to enroll 4,000 hospitals.

The hospitals will be challenged to adopt up to 12 of interventions – six of which were included in the 100,000 Lives Campaign and six of which are new.  The six new interventions are:

• Prevent Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) infection – by reliably implementing scientifically proven infection control practices throughout the hospital
• Reduce harm from high-alert medications – by starting with a focus on anticoagulants, sedatives, narcotics and insulin
• Reduce surgical complications – by reliably implementing the changes in care recommended by the Surgical Care Improvement Project (SCIP)
• Prevent pressure ulcers – by reliably using science-based  guidelines for prevention of this serious and common complication
• Deliver reliable, evidence- based care for congestive heart failure – to reduce readmissions
• Get Boards on board – by defining and spreading new and leveraged processes for hospital Boards of Directors, so they can become far more effective in accelerating the improvement of care

For more information about the campaign, go to www.ihi.org.

IHI 100K Lives Campaign

At the Institute for Healthcare (IHI) annual meeting held recently in Orlando, FLA, and on the cover of Managed Healthcare (February2005), Dr. Don Berwick, IHI CEO, declared “I’m losing my patience, not with the people in health care, but the system itself.” Using the motto “Some is not a number, soon is not a time” he wants to save 100,000 lives by 9 a.m., June 14, 2006 . To reach this end, IHI is partnered with other leading health care organizations in launching this unprecedented 100K Lives Campaign.

Read more about the 100K Lives Campaign