TUESDAY, June 13 (HealthDay News) -- The 100,000 Lives Campaign, a nationwide initiative of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), started in June 2005 and will end June 14, 2006, according to its founder Donald Berwick, M.D., who presented preliminary results at the American Medical Association's Annual House of Delegates meeting in Chicago.
The object of the program is to give truth to the myth that U.S health care is the best in the world, Berwick said. "The program will close the gap of what health care is to what it should be."
As of April, the program had saved 84,987 lives -- lives that would otherwise have been lost. Berwick hinted that the final number of lives saved will be at or better than the 100,000 lives goal.
The program, which involved 3,000 U.S. hospitals, has six goals: Response team deployed at the first sign of patient decline; delivery of reliable, evidence-based care for acute myocardial infarction; prevention of adverse drug events; prevention of central line infections; prevention of surgical site infections; and prevention of ventilator-associated pneumonia.
Ronald M. Davis, M.D., AMA's president-elect, said the program was fully supported by the AMA and that the AMA will continue to work with the IHI to implement and expand the program.
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