IHI, Catholic Health Partners Form Partnership

The Institute for Healthcare Improvement and Catholic Health Partners have announced that they have formed a partnership to reduce preventable harm throughout CHP's nine regional health systems.

Cambridge, MA-based IHI will work with CHP—the largest health system in Ohio, and with 34 hospitals in Ohio, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana and Pennsylvania—on a large-scale patient safety initiative in model hospitals to spread best practice improvements across the CHP organization.

The independent, not-for-profit IHI and CHP have already began the first phase of the partnership, which is based on the Institute of Medicine's six Aims for Improvement—healthcare that is safe, effective, patient-centered, timely, efficient and equitable.

"This partnership with Catholic Health Partners provides an extraordinary opportunity to take evidence-based improvements to scale in the states served by Catholic Health Partners," said IHI President/CEO Maureen Bisognano. "We look forward to implementing this initiative and drawing on IHI's wealth of experience in spreading proven improvement practices across the United States and around the world."

CHP President/CEO Michael D. Connelly said the health system has worked over the last decade to improve clinical quality and patient safety. "Our objective is to harm no patient. Nothing exemplifies our mission better or is as foundational to our strategic direction and annual plans," he said.  "Now, in partnership with IHI, our intention is to continue to reduce inpatient mortality, eliminate preventable harm, achieve nationally-designated quality measures and increase patient satisfaction."

The partnership will accelerate CHP's use of professionals equipped with enhanced improvement and safety knowledge; implement proven changes to improve patient safety within selected hospitals, to create exemplar hospitals that will spread improvement across the CHP system; and collaborate with leaders at all levels of CHP.

IHI designed the initiative and modeled it after its Safer Patients Initiative in the United Kingdom.