Don Berwick

Don Berwick has been in the news quite a bit these last few weeks. For months, Republicans have been blasting Berwick's approach to health reform, which, like Obama's, promotes centralizing health care delivery and using government programs to affect change. Republican senators have therefore refused to confirm Berwick, who has been serving in a recess appointment as Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). He has recently announced that he is resigning effective December 2nd, one month earlier than expected.

I read each article with personal interest, as Don is the founder of IHI, the think tank / healthcare consulting firm that I'm currently working for. Until he stepped down to head Medicare and Medicaid, Berwick served as CEO of IHI. I came to know Don through the work that IHI did with LifeSpring, helping us improve clinical quality and reduce our c-section rates. At each meeting, I found myself learning so much just by studying what questions he asks, and how exactly he asks them. It's funny thinking of someone as your mentor after only a few meetings, but that's how I started to think of him (and thus the move to IHI seemed only natural).

There was a good article by Rosemary Gibson in yesterday's Huffington Post which, though it makes me sad about America's health care system, makes me proud to be working with IHI internationally:

Americans could not have a better champion for good medical care. I know this for a fact. I led quality and safety initiatives at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for sixteen years and had the privilege of working with Dr. Berwick and his smart, dedicated colleagues at the Boston-based Institute for Healthcare Improvement.

They worked tirelessly to bring the science of improvement to hospitals, doctors' offices and other health care facilities. In case you haven't noticed, they have been extreme laggards in implementing the most rudimentary process improvements that safety critical industries such as aviation and nuclear power deploy routinely to reduce the potential for harm.

Here is one of many examples of how Dr. Berwick helped save lives. A preventable cause of hospital death is called 'failure to rescue'. It occurs when a patient's condition deteriorates and doctors and nurses miss the fact that the patient is in trouble.

With Dr. Berwick's leadership, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement identified a possible solution and taught doctors and nurses in hospitals around the country how to implement it. Called rapid response teams, many doctors and nurses who put these teams in place reported that mortality at their hospitals dropped.

Dr. Berwick and his team made this and many other life-saving improvements possible. Without a doubt, many Americans are alive today because of the work he taught, inspired and led.

For full article, click here.