Rural hospitals and the "5 Million Lives Campaign". Catholic Health Initiatives is encouraging its smaller facilities to join a patient-safety effort.

he Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), Cambridge, Mass., is in the midst J k of enlisting 4,000 U.S. hospitals in a "5 Million Lives Campaign," its second national initiative to improve the quality performance of hospitals in this country. In the IHFs BY JOHN F. ANDERSON, MD f effort, the successful "100k Lives Campaign," 3,100 hospitals implemented care improvements, thereby avoiding an estimated 122,000 inpatient deaths. Achievement of the two campaigns' ambitious goals requires the participation of U.S. hospitals of all sizes. However, participation presents a challenge for many small, rural hospitals, where leaders may hesitate to join the campaign because they don't know how to adapt it to their needs, capabilities, and available resources. "What makes the IHI campaign so valuable to smaller hospitals is that they usually don't have the resources to develop this type of initiative on their own," said Peg Gilbert, quality improvement coordinator for Saint Francis Medical Center, Grand Island, Neb. "With the 100k Lives Campaign and the 5 Million Lives Campaign, IHI has done all of the research and development of interventions proven to increase patient care and safety. Small hospitals can take that information and find the best way to implement it locally." Gilbert's hospital is part of Catholic Health Initiatives (CHI), based in Denver, the nation's second-largest Catholic health care system. From