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Tue, Dec 08 2009 7:01 PM EST
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One of the interesting side notes that came out of Don Berwick’s wide-ranging keynote this morning was his remark that many attendees had asked him to focus on clinical issues, and not health care reform, during his remarks.
While Berwick wisely ignored that advice and gave a pretty well-received speech that deftly tied together the big picture, after attending IHI, I can see where his would-be advisors are coming from. In the midst of a fractious national debate on the future of health care, the passion that clinicians have for improvement is a welcome reprieve from arguments over the public option, death panels and Medicare cuts.
At session after session, I’ve watched countless administrators, physicians and nurses engage presenters with well-thought out, practical questions about their projects. I’ve heard folks say they pay their own way here from far-away locales simply because of the quality of the event.
For the time being, of course, the debate in Washington is going to take center stage over the grass-roots clinical experiments on display in Orlando this week, as Berwick himself acknowledged. But it’s worth taking a step back from the big picture every once in a while to remember that better care starts with real, lasting engagement from every part of a hospital’s team, no matter what the national picture looks like.
As a reference, during his presentation, Berwick cited several U.S. cities that have driven down health care costs with a community-centric strategy while remaining competitive in delivering quality outcomes—notably Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He also mentioned McAllen, Texas, which was cited in Atul Gawande’s highly publicized New Yorker article last summer for its extraordinarily high Medicare costs.
Haydn Bush, quality resources specialist with AHA Quality Center, is blogging from the IHI conference.
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