The Institute of Medicine (IOM) study, Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century, defined a vision for improving the quality of our nation’s health care.  Though reforming a system as vast and complex as American health care is a daunting task, the Quality Chasm report distilled the principles of change into six guiding aims–health care should be safe, effective, efficient, patient-centered, timely, and equitable.  A subsequent IOM report, Priority Areas for National Action: Transforming Health Care Quality, identified 20 clinical areas for the nation to focus immediate attention.  Together, these two reports layout a framework for action. 

In response, on January 6-7, 2004 the IOM will host an invitational summit to further translate the Quality Chasm goals into reality by focusing on the clinical areas recommended in the Priority Areas report.  This event, the first annual Quality Chasm Summit, will address the environmental forces that need to be adapted in order to achieve significant improvements in quality in the priority areas. 

The summit will focus particular attention on five priority areas: asthma, chronic heart failure, major depression, diabetes, and pain control in advanced cancer. 

Specific objectives for the summit include:

• To stimulate and further local and national quality improvement efforts, consistent with the IOM’s Crossing the Quality Chasm, focusing on five priority areas—asthma, chronic heart failure, depression, diabetes, and pain control in cancer.
• To describe measurable aims and appropriate strategies for improving care in the five targeted priority areas, including endorsing performance measures necessary to assess progress over 3-5 years.
• To stimulate supportive interrelationships and synergies between locally based efforts and resources at the national level, and to make highly visible the commitments that result.

This activity is best characterized as a dissemination effort.

The start date for the project was December 1, 2002.  The study will include two committee meetings and an invitational mutidiciplinary summit of approximately 125 people.  A final report will be generated synthesizing the strategies and action plans developed at the summit.