Welcome to the Institute for Health Improvement’s (IHI) Public Health page! The collection of resources you will find here represents content from IHI’s work in health care quality improvement that we think will help public health leaders and staff bring quality improvement to your programs and organizations.
The relevant resources listed here cover various topics — chronic care programs, flow and access to care, spreading change, and leadership for system improvement — and have been selected from IHI's website content as part of a joint project with the Public Health Foundation (PHF). Additional information on quality improvement for public health can also be found at the PHF Public Health Infrastructure Online Resource Center.
Note: Access to some IHI content requires users to be registered with IHI's website. To create a login ID, please go to www.ihi.org/ihi/users/login.aspx. Creating an ID is free and allows you to access all materials listed on this page.
Learn about specific changes, measures, and tools for improvement that can be used in your public health program.
Chronic Conditions:
The Chronic Care Model encourages high-quality chronic disease management and may be applied to a variety of chronic illnesses, health care settings, and target populations. The model identifies six areas of focus, and promotes the development of productive interactions between patients who take an active part in their care and providers backed up by resources and expertise.
- Evaluate the effect of changes to improve care for persons with asthma or diabetes using specific measures:
- Numerous tools are available to help improve care for people with chronic conditions, including:
- Asthma Action Plan: Care teams, including pediatricians, nurses, and others as necessary, can use this tool to work with patients to create a plan that outlines regular steps to prevent and/or treat asthma attacks.
- Stories About How Other Organizations Are Making Improvements
HIV/AIDS:
- Learn about specific Changes to improve care and Measures to assess whether these changes are leading to improvement.
This training manual was developed to help health centers, clinics, and hospitals improve the care of people with HIV/AIDS disease and contains specific changes, resources, and tools for HIV/AIDS disease and depression.
This curriculum was designed to be used in a train-the-trainer structure. The tool contains three interactive modules and an agenda for the training curriculum.
- Stories About How Other Organizations Are Making Improvements
Flow:
Flow refers to the movement of patients through a hospital’s or clinic’s care system — from intake to treatment to discharge. Health clinics operated by local health departments or non-profits can learn from hospitals’ experiences on how to move patients, information, and materials through their system in a timely and efficient way in order to increase patient safety, cost efficiency, staff satisfaction, and patient satisfaction.
- Learn about specific changes to improve the flow of patients through acute care settings.
This IHI Innovation Series white paper offers new perspectives on the impediments to timely and efficient flow of patients through acute care settings.
Office Practice Access and Planned Care:
This IHI.org story discusses six principles for improving access to care.
Providing aims, design targets and measures, a diagnostic tool, and recommendations for who should be on an innovation team, this guide can be used by public health organizations to help develop a planned care system for all patients in outpatient settings.
This IHI Innovation Series white paper discusses testing of a new design for the delivery of primary care for all patients, which reaches high levels of effectiveness, efficiency, and patient-centeredness.
- Stories About How Other Organizations Are Making Improvements
A key factor in closing the gap between best practice and common practice is the ability of organizations to rapidly spread innovations and new ideas. This IHI Innovation Series white paper describes a framework for effective ways to spread change.
- Stories About How Other Organizations Are Making Improvements
This IHI Innovation Series white paper presents some important leverage points for leaders who want to achieve dramatic, system-level performance improvement.
This IHI Innovation Series white paper presents eight steps that are recommended for leaders to follow to achieve patient safety and high reliability in their organizations.
In this four-part IHI.org article series, IHI Senior Fellow Tom Nolan describes a system of executing improvement projects aimed at achieving unprecedented and sustained results at the system level.
This guide offers senior leaders and board members in public health an introduction to developing effective leadership for promoting quality improvement.
Public Health Foundation
For more information about resources available to help health agencies, community organizations, and public health systems strengthen their infrastructure and achieve results, see the Public Health Foundation website.
Take a Tour!
The Public Health Foundation has created a five-minute video tutorial on how to effectively find tools and information on improvement and performance management. [Note: The tutorial may take a few minutes to download the first time you access it.]
Go to the Tutorial
