As a 2011 recipient of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit has achieved recognition as a top-performing organization for excellence in innovation, efficiency, and quality improvement. The highest priority of our quality improvement work is to become a harmless organization. As a member of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI)’s “100,000 Lives” and “5 Million Lives” campaigns, we used IHI’s 12 evidence-based interventions as well as other initiatives to reduce harm.

During 2004–2008 our systemwide mortality rate decreased by 29 percent. At that time we developed our own “No Harm Campaign” to integrate national, local, and homegrown efforts into one systemwide initiative to reduce harm. During 2008–2011, our systemwide mortality rate decreased by another 12 percent, and our combined inpatient harm rate decreased by 26 percent. This reflects a reduction of 337 harm events per month, even while adding a new hospital and increasing the total number of patient days in the period measured.

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