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Changing the Balance of Power: “You Cannot Give What You Do Not Have”

Don Berwick, MD
Former Administrator, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
Founding CEO, Institute for Healthcare Improvement

This talk explores the need for major redesign of health care delivery – long overdue. Drawing on the so-called “Radical Redesign Principles” for a new health care system from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s Leadership Alliance, Dr. Berwick will explain especially the first of those principles: “Change the Balance of Power,” with specific illustrations of how patients, families, and communities can take over their own care and better pursue their own health. This gives new and fresher meaning to the much-used phrase, “patient-centered care,” and offers doctors, nurses, and other health professionals a new and positive image of themselves as healers, “co-producing care” with those they serve. It also offers a glimpse of some of the truly disruptive care delivery system innovations now well on their way.

Dr. Don Berwick is a leading advocate for high-quality healthcare and is one of the top thinkers in healthcare today. He sees tremendous unrealized potential in American medicine. Despite our outstanding knowledge base, expert practitioners, and world-class equipment, our healthcare system can do better in providing safe, high-quality care at reasonable costs. Dr. Berwick will address the sources of excellence, and of defect, in healthcare and hospice settings today, explain which approaches are not effective, and provide real insight on where improvement can be attained. Dr. Berwick is currently President Emeritus and Senior Fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, a nonprofit dedicated to improving healthcare around the world. From July 2010, to December 2011, he served as Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. His books include Promising Healthcare: How We Can Rescue Health Care by Improving It, Curing Health Care, and New Rules: Regulation, Markets and the Quality of American Health Care.

Learning Outcomes

      • Describe how patients can take control of their own care
      • Identify ways to “co-produce” care with patients and families

CE/CME Offered: Nurse, Physician, Social Worker, Non-Physician Healthcare Professional