IHI Triple Aim

Key Thoughts:

IHI (Institute of Health Improvement) is an educational institution that promotes improvement in the delivery of healthcare. They became famous after their successful Save 100,000 Lives campaign, and just recently finished their Save 5 Million Lives campaign. Today, I just came across their many other new initiatives. It's call Triple Aim. Each of this initiatives has something that our hospital can benefit even if we do not participate in the campaign officially.

The Triple Aim are-

• health of the defined population
• Enhance the patient care experience (including quality, access
and reliability)
• Reduce, or at least control, the per capita cost of care

You will notice straight away that this is a much broader initiative involving other stakeholders in the healthcare delivery continuum. In 2007, IHI translated the Triple Aim into specific action plans-

1. A focus on individuals and families
2. Redesign of primary care services and structures
3. Population health management
4. A cost-control platform
5. System integration and execution

Summary:

Obviously, there's so much to explain on this noble but massive change management campaign. I am going to deviate from the usual by not summarizing a topic, but to point you towards the Triple Aim main page to read for yourself.

There are several links which provided much in-depth details. There's a case study CareOregon, concept design paper, and an overview of the model.

My Comments:

As I mentioned earlier, each initiative from IHI provides us with something worth implementing. To fully live the mission of serving the community, we must stay on this journey, there are challenges no doubt, there's also vast opportunities to do something of significant for the community. What if we can significantly improve the healthcare delivery for our community without increasing the cost of providing it? That's worth fighting for, isn't it?

Do spend time today to understand what this is all about.

Reference: The Triple Aim, Institute of Healthcare Improvement, http://www.ihi.org/IHI/Programs/StrategicInitiatives/TripleAim.htm, accessed: 18 Jan 2009.