Don Berwick, MD, MPP, President/CEO, Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) sent a video message to BEACON Collaborative and the over 800 participants at the 2010 Annual Exchange on April 27 at the Santa Clara Convention Center. Dr. Berwick noted that "the achievements of the collaborative are enormous" and sees BEACON approaching a new stage of maturation to take on more dimensions of healthcare. He referred to the Six Dimensions of Quality and how the challenge for all of us to improve healthcare is to expand to embrace all of the dimensions of quality at once, with a sense of confidence and optimism.

 Six Dimensions of Quality

• SAFETY - Healthcare must help, not hurt patients
  
• EFFECTIVENESS - Aligning care with science
  
• PATIENT CENTEREDNESS - Putting more choices, a sense of self-efficacy in the hands and minds of patients and their loved ones, while giving patients the sense of dignity and the power to take care of themselves
  
• TIMELINESS - Removing unwanted delays, reducing the level of waste in the system and recognizing that continuous flow is better for the people we are trying to help
  
• EFFICIENCY - Incorporating lean thinking and production while removing all unnecessary, non-value added activities
  
• EQUITY - Closing the gaps in achievement and potential

"We know we can make healthcare safer at a level I would not have thought possible when I began this journey. The next step is to move beyond the mastery of a single dimension to mastering all dimensions, at once," Dr. Berwick states, "I know BEACON is capable and I encourage you to add the other dimensions to your portfolio, broadening the scale and scope of what the collaborative is trying to achieve. Incorporating new methods of understanding, measurement and a sense of possibility of multi-dimensions and development is totally within your grasp."

"I believe the skills, knowledge, will and encouragement that you are assembling in BEACON Collaborative, as in many other collaboratives throughout the country, are tremendous resources for offering our country the opportunity to create the care we want, the way we should be creating it, through change. I firmly believe a higher quality system will be a more sustainable system, better for patients and communities."

Dr. Berwick concludes, "I look to you, the BEACON Collaborative, for leadership in demonstrating what is possible."

Click here to view the entire video message