IHI Awarded Federal Funding to Develop and Disseminate Innovations in Healthcare Delivery
Cambridge, Massachusetts, October 7, 2010—The U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has awarded a five-year Master Contract to the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) to help accelerate adoption of new models of health care delivery nationally. The contract is awarded through AHRQ’s Accelerating Change and Transformation in Organizations and Networks (ACTION) II initiative. ACTION II is a model of field-based research designed to accelerate the adoption of research and innovation into practice and to more quickly create successful models of health care delivery that can be more widely spread and emulated.
IHI will pursue this in collaboration with 12 other organizations representing provider, policy, research and state-level health care organizations. The partners include: Ascension Health, Brigham and Women’s Hospital Center of Excellence for Patient Safety Research and Practice, Cambridge Health Alliance, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Contra Costa Regional Medical Center, Harvard School of Public Health Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, Iowa Healthcare Collaborative, North Carolina Center for Hospital Quality and Patient Safety, North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, Sentara Healthcare and University of Massachusetts Medical School.
“AHRQ has long been a leader in funding pragmatic research that leads to improved health care for all Americans,” said Don Goldmann, MD, IHI Senior Vice President. “The goals of the ACTION II initiative align strongly with the mission and capabilities of IHI. We are honored to work with AHRQ on this exciting initiative to make innovations in health care more widespread and sustainable.”
Under the five-year contract, which begins November 1, IHI will have the opportunity to compete for task orders to develop, test, spread and sustain innovations in health service delivery and organization in order to measurably improve the effectiveness, safety, quality, equity, and efficiency of health care in the United States. Task orders issued under the ACTION II initiative will examine topics such as patient safety, health information technology, the structure and organization of care delivery, coordination of care, payment, and prevention and care management, among others. AHRQ launched the first ACTION initiative, designed to accelerate the definition and implementation of health care innovations, in response to studies that showed that it can take nearly 17 years for even a small percentage of medical research to be transformed into innovative medical practice. ACTION II seeks to continue and expand that work.
IHI is one of 17 partnerships nationally that have been awarded an ACTION II Master Contract. The 17 partnerships include a total of more than 350 collaborating organizations that provide access to, and delivery of, health care to an estimated half of all Americans.
About IHI
The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) is an independent not-for-profit organization helping to lead the improvement of health care throughout the world. Founded in 1991 and based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, IHI (www.ihi.org) works to accelerate improvement by building the will for change, cultivating promising concepts for improving patient care, and helping health care systems put those ideas into action.