Here at Occupy Healthcare, we recognize that we all need to work towards changing healthcare, but sometimes change can we hard. While we talk about complex health policy and systems issues, we understand that these changes are not simple and do not easily allow for someone to flip a switch for change to occur.
In our respective efforts to innovate in healthcare, it is helpful to know who else is doing similar work, where and what have they learned. While there are many resources out there to help those interested in changing healthcare, I want to point out two (there are many!)
1) The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s Innovations Exchange: According to this robust website, the Innovations Exchange offers the following:
- Searchable innovations. Profiles of successful and attempted innovations describe the innovative activity, its impact, how the innovator developed and implemented it, and other useful information for deciding whether to adopt the innovation.
- Searchable QualityTools. Practical tools that can help you assess, measure, promote, and improve the quality of health care.
- Learning opportunities. Many resources describing the process of innovation and adoption, and ways to enhance any organization’s receptivity to innovative approaches to care. Resources include expert commentaries, articles, perspectives, and adoption guides.
- Networking opportunities. You can interact with innovators and organizations that have adopted innovations to learn new approaches to delivering care, and develop effective strategies for changing care delivery. You can connect with innovators by participating in Web Events that focus on cutting-edge innovations and by posting comments on specific innovations. User comments may ask or respond to questions about how an innovation works, and mention additional resources and lessons learned from adopting, implementing, and sustaining an innovation.
One of the more unique aspects to this website is the “Frontline Innovators” section. As seen in the video below, this section allows for leaders to describe their innovation in a narrative form. There are some interesting stories on the website, but this was one of my favorites.
2) Institute for Healthcare Improvement(IHI): IHI is “an independent not-for profit-organization based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that focuses on motivating and building the will for change; identifying and testing new models of care in partnership with both patients and health care professionals; and ensuring the broadest possible adoption of best practices and effective innovations.”
On the IHI website, one can find resources around healthcare quality improvement as well various trainings and conferences on the subject of healthcare improvement. And of course, you can listen and learn from one of most innovative leaders, Dr. Don Berwick.
With uncertainty in the air around the Supreme Court decision and the future of the healthcare law, there are a few things that remain despite the outcome of these decisions; innovation in healthcare is one of them.
As we work towards more substantive innovation in healthcare, let’s use the resources that are available and learn from one another.
What resources have you found helpful?
Dr. Miller has his doctorate in clinical psychology and is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine where he is the Director of the Office of Integrated Healthcare Research and Policy. His core task is to integrate mental health across all three of the department’s core mission areas: clinical, education, and research. Opinions expressed here are his own and not those of his employer.
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