IHI Names Premier Inc. Partner in 5 Million Lives Campaign to Reduce Medical Harm Throughout the Nation
The Premier Inc. healthcare alliance today announced that it has been named a partner in the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s 5 Million Lives Campaign, a national campaign to dramatically reduce incidents of medical harm in U.S. hospitals. The 5 Million Lives Campaign asks hospitals to improve 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. Premier is one of 16 campaign partners.
The 5 Million Lives Campaign builds upon the success of the 100,000 Lives Campaign, in which 3,100 participating hospitals reduced inpatient deaths by an estimated 122,000 in 18 months. Over 900 Premier member and client hospitals helped save an estimated 35,000 lives in IHI’s 100,000 Lives Campaign.
The new campaign will promote the adoption of up to 12 improvements in care that can save lives and reduce patient injuries, and it aims to enroll even more hospitals than participated in the previous campaign. New interventions targeted at reducing harm include the prevention of MRSA infections and the reduction of surgical complications.
“Premier and its members and clients are proud to be a partner in this aggressive campaign, and we look forward to building off the successes that we achieved in the 100,000 Lives Campaign,” said Stephanie Alexander, senior vice president and general manager for Premier Healthcare Informatics. “We are confident that Premier and membership can and will improve their practices in and around infection control and prevention and, most importantly, save patient lives.”
Premier recently acquired Cereplex, Inc., which provides breakthrough technology to prevent outbreaks of infection and protect patients by continuously tracking hospital infections and antibiotic use via Web-based reporting tools, to support its ongoing effort to make healthcare safer and more effective. Hospitals using Premier’s antibiotic monitoring system have reported reducing antibiotic costs as much as 23 percent through reduction in inappropriate use of the increasingly costly drugs.
“No one in healthcare can feel comfortable with the magnitude of infections, adverse drug events and other complications that hospital patients endure. Dozens of organizations and programs are now working to reduce that toll. They deserve encouragement. This campaign joins those efforts, and seeks leverage and scale that our nation has never had before to make care safe — everywhere,” said Donald M. Berwick, MD, MPP, FRCP, president and CEO at IHI. “We can, and we will, equip all willing healthcare providers with the tools they need to make the motto ‘First, do no harm’ a reality.”
Participating hospitals plan to implement and continue working on the following interventions as part of their participation in the 5 Million Lives Campaign:
Prevent Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) infection;
Reduce harm from high-alert medications;
Reduce surgical complications by reliably implementing the changes in care recommended by the Surgical Care Improvement Project (SCIP);
Prevent pressure ulcers;
Deliver reliable, evidence-based care for congestive heart failure;
Get Boards on board;
Deploy Rapid Response Teams;
Deliver reliable, evidence-based care for acute myocardial infarction;
Prevent adverse drug events;
Prevent central line infections;
Prevent surgical site infections;
Prevent ventilator-associated pneumonia.
About The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI)
The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (www.ihi.org) is a not-for-profit organization leading the improvement of healthcare throughout the world. Founded in 1991 and based in Cambridge, MA, IHI is a catalyst for change, cultivating innovative concepts for improving patient care and implementing programs for putting those ideas into action. Thousands of healthcare providers, including many of the finest hospitals in the world, participate in IHI’s groundbreaking work.
About Premier Inc., recipient of the 2006 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award
Serving 1,700 hospitals and 43,000 other healthcare sites, Premier Inc. is the largest healthcare alliance in the United States dedicated to improving patient outcomes while safely reducing the cost of care. Owned by not-for-profit hospitals, Premier operates the nation’s largest healthcare purchasing network, the most comprehensive repository of hospital clinical and financial information and one of the largest policy-holder owned, hospital professional liability risk-retention groups in healthcare. Headquartered in San Diego, Premier has offices in Charlotte, N.C. and Washington, D.C. For more information, visit www.premierinc.com.