Introduction
With its Forum on the Science of Health Care Quality Improvement and Implementation, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) convenes representatives from academia, clinical practice, government, and industry in a neutral setting where they can discuss various ideas about improving the science behind health care quality improvement and implementation. Through these discussions, forum members attain a better understanding of what the needs of the science are, and they begin breaking down the communication barriers that prevent advances in the field.
The workshop “The Path to Quality Improvement: Approaches and Barriers” was held on January 16, 2007, in Washington, D.C. It was the result of a forum conversation that had taken place in December 2006. The forum had identified a need to understand what was meant by the terms “quality improvement” and “implementation science,” and during the ensuing discussion it became clear to forum participants that these terms mean different things to different people. Forum participants also discussed the need to identify the barriers to quality improvement research and to implementation science. The purpose of this workshop was therefore to bring people together from various arenas to discuss the scope of quality improvement in a broad sense. The forum members felt it would be valuable to hear about lessons learned not only from within health care settings but from outside of health care as well. Because of the limited time available at this workshop, not all relevant perspectives
and issues could be discussed. The forum members plan to integrate other views and topics in its future activities.
The following chapters describe and summarize the presentations and discussions that took place during that workshop, and the content is therefore limited to what was presented and discussed during the workshop itself. We realize that there is a broader scope of issues pertaining to this subject area, but we are unable to address them in this summary.