WIHI - A Podcast from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement

Steve Spear speaks to an audience at IHIs National Forum, drawing on his own life experience and work with multiple industries to point out that better ways to do things are within reach.

Victor Montori argues that it is time for providers to look up from strict protocols long enough to get curious about their patients lives and begin to minimize barriers to better health, not add to them.

The health care quality improvement movement has rallied around some significant innovations over the years, many of which have had a lasting impact.

These days, no one thinks twice about getting a mole removed or undergoing cataract surgery outside of a hospital. Upwards of 20 million outpatient procedures are performed in the US each year. As those numbers rise, so do concerns about safety.

Often, what goes around really does come around. And that's been a good thing for an initiative focused on housing chronically homeless individuals along with high numbers of US veterans who are living on the streets.

Burnout in health care is a big and complex topic, and joy in work doesn't happen overnight, but we're in it for the long haul

What do we need and expect from trustees of health systems when it comes to their oversight of quality and safety?

You may have a lot of solid data pointing to outcomes disparities in your health system by race, ethnicity, and other factors. What does health equity look like in your community and where you work? In what ways is your organization making health equity a strategic priority?

It's estimated that nearly 50 percent of workplace assaults happen in a health care setting. What solutions are health care organizations putting in place to help deal with this unique and dangerous problem?

Patients undergoing dialysis typically do so in a hospital or health care facility. Most people don't question the need to have experienced health care staff on hand or what's considered a safe environment for the treatments. But that might be changing.

Learning from failure is an important part of the quality improvement process in health care. Groups focused on improving the health of communities are also discovering the value of "failing forward;" leveraging the learning from failure to accelerate progress.

Learning from failure is an important part of quality improvement in health care. But what can we learn from improvement efforts that languish or stall due to the inglorious nature of the work itself?

Technology is everywhere in health care. It's fast, it's efficient, and it can reduce errors. But, technology is not a cure-all. It can make people complacent, introduce new errors, and get in the way of meaningful face-to-face interactions.

At IHI, we do our best to keep our fingers on the pulse of the health care improvement world — what trends are emerging, what projects are happening, and what improvers need to do their work. And improvement tools clearly make a difference

A lot of the quality and safety improvements that have taken place in recent years in the US — think reducing hospital-acquired infections, creating safety cultures, implementing team-based primary care — have occurred regardless of what was or wasn't happening in Washington, DC. While political debates raged on, somehow the health care quality improvement movem​​ent continued to move ahead