The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) announced in June that its 100K Lives Campaign, which aimed to prevent 100,000 avoidable deaths in health care facilities over an 18-month period, exceeded its goal. An estimated 122,300 lives were saved by the 3,000-plus hospitals that enrolled in the IHI campaign.

The participating hospitals, which accounted for about 75% of U.S. hospital beds, agreed to initiate some or all of these six evidence-based quality improvement initiatives: activating a rapid response team, preventing ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP), preventing adverse drug events with medication reconciliation, preventing central line infections, providing evidence-based care to treat myocardial infarction, and preventing surgical site infections.

A spokesman for the IHI said the campaign not only saved lives during the campaign period, but also initiated ongoing changes that will raise health care standards nationwide and save many more lives in the future. For example, hundreds of hospitals have implemented rapid response teams, and over 20 facilities have reported going more than a year without a single case of VAP.

The IHI's six quality improvement initiatives are showcased in a series of articles appearing in the January through June issues of Nursing2006 (available free online under Resources at http://www.nursing2006.com). For more on the 100K Lives Campaign, visit http://www.ihi.org/campaign.