Institute for Healthcare Improvement: Breakthrough Series College

IHI created the Breakthrough Series as a collaborative improvement model to accelerate improvement worldwide. The Breakthrough Series College is a powerful way to help organizations like yours adapt these proven methods to spread outstanding improvements in your organization.

The three-day College Session is designed to prepare participants for Collaborative start-up within four months, and includes intensive one- to four-hour workshops on the following topics:

Collaboratives: How and why they work
Topic selection
Developing key technical content
Preparing teams to participate
Teaching the Model for Improvement
Developing and running Learning Sessions
Supporting teams during Action Periods
Spreading improvement
Science of improvement

The Breakthrough Series College prepares participants for two key roles: Director and Improvement Advisor. You will build on this foundation during the year through conference calls, an email listserv, and access to the College website.

Participants in this program may benefit from staying an additional day and attending IHI's Campaign College: Planning and Executing Large-Scale Improvement, a dynamic new program created to share IHI’s successful experience with large-scale improvement efforts — especially campaigns.

Listen to a recording of the January 16 Breakthrough Series College informational call. [Please note: You will need to download the WebEx player in order to view the recording.]

Read a story about a team that used the Breakthrough Series College model to make some dramatic improvements.

Enrollment Includes

Breakthrough Series College enrollment includes:

Prework and participation in a preparatory call
Attendance at the three-day College Session
Membership in the Breakthrough Series College Network
Access to the College Extranet and monthly conference calls
Membership to the College email distribution group
Attendance at the annual College reunion at IHI’s National Forum in December
All the materials needed to launch and support a Collaborative (materials will be provided in hard copy and electronically so that you can customize them for your system)

Members of the Breakthrough Series College are expected to share their experiences and document the performance of their Collaboratives in the IHI registry of Collaboratives.

Questions

For more information on the Breakthrough Series College, please contact Marie Schall at mschall@ihi.org.

Who Should Attend?

Individuals and teams from organizations who intend to rapidly spread improvements through their systems using a Collaborative model in the Director or Improvement Advisor Role.

The Breakthrough Series College trains for two important team roles: Director and Improvement Advisor. You will need to choose one of these roles as some sessions are offered concurrently.

Director: Oversees all aspects of the Collaborative; drives the content development for all phases, including the topic content ("change package"), preparatory materials for participants ("prework"), Learning Sessions, and Action Period activities; coaches and guides topic experts; facilitates Learning Sessions and conference calls; teaches and coaches teams about process improvement (with the Improvement Advisor); regularly assesses Collaborative progress and institutes necessary changes to meet Collaborative goals.
Improvement Advisor: Participates with the topic experts and Collaborative Director to design the topic content (the charter and "change package") and the preparatory materials ("prework"); develops the Collaborative measurement system with the assistance of the topic experts; teaches and coaches teams on process improvement at Learning Sessions and during Action Periods; assesses progress in the Collaborative and identifies necessary changes in key technical content, measurement, and use of improvement methods.