WIHI: Breaking the Rules: Lessons from IHI’s Leadership Alliance

Date: April 7, 2016

Featuring:

• Saranya Loehrer, MD, MPH, Executive Director, North America Strategy and Operations, Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI)
• Helen Macfie, PharmD, FABC, Chief Transformation Officer, Certified Lean Leader, MemorialCare Health System
• Carolyn Candiello, Vice President, Quality and Patient Safety, GBMC HealthCare, Inc.
• Cate O’Connor-Devlin, RN, BSN, Administrative Director of Patient Throughput/Nurse Safety, GBMC Healthcare, Inc.
• Rhonda Holden, MSN, CENP, Chief Nursing Officer/Administrator Patient Care Services, Kittitas Valley Healthcare, Ellensburg, WA
• Cheryl Woodman, ND, MHSc, CHE Chief Strategy Officer, Women’s College Hospital (Toronto, Canada)

It started from a very human place. Hospital staff found a way for a new mom recovering in the ICU, and her infant in the NICU, to visit with one another in the aftermath of a difficult birth. When the mom and dad were asked later on about their hospital experience, they singled out this breaking (or bending) of the rules that ensured mother and newborn had time together even while both were in intensive care. That got the hospital, MemorialCare Health System, asking some new questions: What are the rules that both staff and patients continue to run up against? Why do some rules persist, interfering with a more optimal care experience, even after they’ve been relaxed or retired? Are some rules misinterpreted, and still others more like myths that live on just because “we’ve always done it this way?"

 

The answers were revealing — and got others thinking, too. MemorialCare is part of IHI’s Leadership Alliance; when Alliance members heard about MemorialCare’s experience, they decided to find out what was happening in their own organizations. They did this with a campaign in January 2016 they dubbed “Breaking the Rules.” We learned about the campaign and how Leadership Alliance members came up with nearly 400 rules in need of a second look on this WIHI.