100,000 Lives Campaign

Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) has announced that the roughly 3,100 U.S. hospitals participating in the 100,000 Lives Campaign—an initiative aimed at preventing medical errors and unnecessary patient deaths—have exceeded their goals and prevented an estimated 122,300 deaths since the program began 18 months ago.

The campaign, which now involves approximately 75% of all U.S. hospital beds, requires participating hospitals to report mortality data, error rates, and patient infections, as well as to adopt some or all of six evidence-based care practices and life-saving interventions; the interventions include rapid response teams for the emergency care of patients whose vital signs suddenly begin to deteriorate, use of preoperative antibiotics to prevent surgical infections, and treatment of heart attack patients with aspirin and beta-blockers.

Approximately 33% of participating hospitals have implemented all six practices and more than 50% have implemented three or more practices. In addition, nearly 100 hospitals that have achieved excellence in specific areas targeted by the campaign have agreed to mentor other hospitals striving to provide better patient care. Speaking yesterday at a hospital conference in Atlanta, the president and CEO of IHI said that the campaign “signals no less than a new standard of health care in America,” noting that he had “never before witnessed such widespread collaboration and commitment” from the health care industry to make such significant improvements in patient care.