In 2001, The Institute of Medicine stated definitively that "health care today harms too frequently and routinely fails to deliver its potential benefits."[1]Institute of Medicine, Committee on the Quality of Health Care in America, Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2001: pg. 1. And, medical experts estimate that each year 15 million episodes of patient harm occur in American hospitals.[2]Donald M. Berwick, 18th Annual National Forum on Quality Improvement in Health Care, http://www.ihi.org/NR/rdonlyres/ 859E92DD-23B5-4323-9E50-CF357CEAF21B/0/ BerwickForumPlenarySlidesDec122006.pdf. This means that 40,000 preventable injuries occur each and every day, ranging from relatively minor bruises and infections to potentially lethal complications.
Just as Massachusetts is a global leader in medical research, life sciences, and biotechnology, so too the Commonwealth is counted among the leaders in the crucial effort to forge a new path that creates a better, safer health care delivery system. A quiet revolution is moving across our state and nation, harnessing the power and commitment of clinicians, administrators, academics, trustees, and patients themselves to achieve higher standards of health care for all people. One of the pioneering leaders is a Massachusetts pediatrician, Dr. Donald M. Berwick, CEO of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI).
In 2004, under Dr. Berwick's visionary leadership, the IHI launched the 100,000 Lives Campaign, a program to prevent 100,000 avoidable hospital deaths by adopting a series of simple, standardized procedures in patients' hospital care. More than 3,000 hospitals in the nation participated in the campaign. The results proved exciting — over an 18-month period, participating hospitals experienced a significant decline in their mortality rates. To ensure that every acute care hospital in Massachusetts participated, we provided $3 million in challenge grants and administrative support.
Determined to reduce avoidable suffering even further and to build upon the great success of the hospitals that participated in the 100,000 Lives Campaign, at the close of 2006, the IHI announced the 5 Million Lives Campaign. Over the next 24 months, the campaign and the hospitals with which it partners will focus on implementing proven initiatives to prevent surgical care complications, reduce staphylococcal (staph) infections, and prevent harm from high-alert medications, such as sedatives, narcotics, and insulin, as well as other life-threatening incidents. The IHI expects more than 4,000 hospitals across the nation to participate in the campaign, which, as the result of Cleve Killingsworth's leadership, will be underwritten primarily by the nation's Blue Cross Blue Shield plans.
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts is proud to partner with Dr. Berwick and the IHI in their innovative efforts. We are firmly committed to collaborating with physicians, advocates, patients and their families, as well as leaders across the state to help create a health care delivery system in Massachusetts that provides everyone with access to safe, effective health care.