Agenda for Change

Faced with a rapidly evolving landscape and overwhelming expectations, the CIR Policy and Education Initiative (PEI) is poised to prepare tomorrow’s physician leaders to play a critical role in this very necessary and exciting transformation. Click the image to download our "Agenda for Change" PowerPoint presentation.

                                      

The Challenge

Since publication of the landmark 1999 Institute of Medicine report To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System and its companion report, Crossing the Quality Chasm in 2001, much has been studied, but little improved. 

Estimates of preventable medical errors are still shockingly high and health care costs continue to rise.

In 2010 the US Department of Health and Human Service's Office of the Inspector General estimated that up to 180,000 patients per year may die as a result of medical care, an extrapolation that would make harm due to medical care the third leading cause of death nationwide. Nearly half of these incidents were preventable, i.e. due to error.

Millions of Americans are subjected to tests and procedures that are not supported by the scientific evidence and can even cause harm, while millions of uninsured Americans receive no care at all until they present in the emergency room with advanced disease.

An Institute of Medicine study in 2012 reported that about 30 percent of health spending in 2009 -- roughly $750 billion -- was wasted on unnecessary services, excessive administrative costs, fraud, and other problems. Moreover, inefficiencies cause needless suffering. By one estimate, roughly 75,000 deaths might have been averted in 2005 if every state had delivered care at the quality level of the best performing state.  

Not surprisingly, patients commonly report high rates of dissatisfaction with their care and health care providers report high rates of dissatisfaction with their jobs.

Solutions

We know the problems.  Identifying and implementing solutions is a key activity and  the pace with which we act must accelerate. Physicians need to be able to:

A CRITICAL GOAL: Our aim is to develop the resident physician leadership necessary to achieve a safe, effective and just healthcare system.

OBJECTIVES:

• Develop a Training Institute to implement the physician leadership transformation we seek.
• Use research to identify the best ways to train resident physicians to be transformative leaders.
• Extend leadership development opportunities to resident physicians.
• Spread the word that resident physicians are transforming health care.