Senior Project Blog Post 2

This week in Switch, the author focuses on the Institute of Healthcare Improvement.  IHI is a Boston based company who has revolutionized how hospitals and other healthcare providers improve the quality of their services.  After years of analyzing data they found that the “defect: rate in health care was 1 in 10 meaning that 10% of patients were not being cared for in the right way.  In 2004 they set a goal to save 100,000 people from avoidable deaths.  To do so, they had to understand the steps it takes to keep people healthy, and pinpoint the times when their coverage goes wrong.  In order to develop a way to fix the issues, hospitals, who are very hesitant to admit that they erred, needed to change decades of habits and customary practices.  Eighteen months later, however, hospitals who had enrolled in IHI’s 100,000 lives campaign prevented an estimated 122,300 deaths.  One of the main reasons for its success, according the Heath Brothers, was the fact that before it started, IHI CEO Donald Berwick set June 14, 2006 as the date he wanted to save 100,000 lives by.  This specific and measurable goal with a due date gave hospitals and healthcare providers something finite to work to accomplish.  Instead of “We want to save lives in the next few years” he made sure people remained focus on the task at hand.  He also made it easy for hospitals to embrace change.  He created an elaborate system of forms and instructions, training, support groups, and mentors, all of whom worked together. organized and efficient,  in order to complete the campaign.  I hope to be able to make the path easy for coaches to adopt a more data driven analysis and tracking of their players development by giving them all the tools they need in order to make the transition easy.  The difficult part will be showing them a finite goal they should have in mind while coaching.