In 2007, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) began work on
Triple Aim, an initiative designed to improve health care by simultaneously pursuing three aims: improving the experience of care, improving the health of populations, and reducing per capita costs of healthcare. These three dimensions of care pull on the healthcare system from different directions, and changing any one has consequences for the other two, either in the same or opposite directions. Triple Aim seeks to optimize performance on all three dimensions of care concurrently by finding the intersection of best performance. The project and the philosophy have gained steam, and IHI is now spearheading several streams of groundbreaking Triple Aim work across North America and Europe.
Because the Triple Aim is ideally suited to the LHIN mandate to improve population health through service integration, CHQI and The Change Foundation supported two representatives from each of Ontario’s 14 LHINs to attend IHI’s two-day Triple Aim conference in the US in February 2009. CHQI worked with a group of senior directors from LHINs that wished to adopt the Triple Aim framework for at least a portion of their Integrated Health Service Plans in support of a program developed between IHI and the LHINs.
Senior teams from all 14 LHINs and representatives from the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care attended our follow-up workshop,
Aim for the Summit, in Toronto September 18, 2009. Hosted by CHQI and The Change Foundation, the Summit gave participants a deeper understanding of the Triple Aim framework and its applicability to the LHIN mandate and current ministry priorities, and they were able to exchange information on specific strategies being explored by LHINs adopting the framework.
Since their introduction to the Triple Aim framework, the following LHINs have adopted the model in their Integrated Health Service Plans (2010 – 2013):
•
Erie St Clair
•
South West
•
Central West
•
Mississauga Halton
•
Central
•
Central East
•
Champlain
•
North Simcoe Muskoka
•
North West
Project Lead: Paula Blackstien-Hirsch