4 Steps to Sustaining Improvement in Health Care

Leading health care organizations recognize that improving care isn´t enough; having a systematic approach to sustaining improvement is equally important.

To learn how to build systems that sustain improvement, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement studied health care organizations that were able to achieve standout results and ten build on them- organizations such as Intermountain Healthcare in Salt Lake City; Saskatoon Health Region in Saskatchewan, Canada; and Virginia Mason Health System in Seattle. These high-performing health systems affered a key insight: To sustain change, you need a strong strategy for engaging and standardizing the work of frontline managers. From their efforts, they derived four steps on how to get started with introducing new standard work processes for point-of-care staff. 

Health system innovations: adapting to rapid change

A fundamental challenge for health systems is the need to adapt to changes in the patterns of health service need, scientific and technological developments, and the economic and institutional contexts within which providers of health services are embedded. This is especially true of many low and middle-income countries, where the pace of multiple and interconnected changes is breath-taking. 

Integrated care for the inhabitants of the city Leuven: Protocol of the ZORGZAAM Leuven integrated care project

In Flanders, the prevalence of chronic diseases is high and still increasing partially due to aging of the population and partially due to other reasons like surviving acute diseases or cancer. The aim of the Zorgzaam Leuven project is to test the impact of the implementation of a complex intervention based on the principles of integrated care for a well defined population of approximately 100.000 inhabitants in Belgium.