$750,000 in Scholarships Granted Annually
Kaiser Permanente has established an $8 million endowment fund to support new health care improvements through training programs offered by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI). The KP endowment will fund approximately $750,000 in scholarships annually for the next 15 years. About half the scholarships are available for use by Kaiser Permanente teams to support health care improvement efforts across all eight regions. The rest will be used to support quality initiatives among Kaiser Permanente's Community Benefit safety net partners.
"These programs give our teams, leaders, community partners, and participants from labor an opportunity to rub shoulders with other health care systems," says Alide Chase, vice president of Quality and Safety, Program Office. "I think that's good for us, because sometimes we tend to be a little insular. These experiences give us a chance to realize that other organizations are often struggling with the same challenges and may have already solved some of the problems we're working to address."
In 2005, 376 employees and more than 45 community partners were granted scholarships to attend the IHI Hospital Summit, the Executive Quality program, the Office Practice program, Web-based trainings in Model for Improvement and Reducing Wait Times, or the IHI Breakthrough College Series.
These and other new programs, including one of Patient Safety Officers, are scheduled for 2006. To view IHI's downloadable winter/spring program catalog, go to www.ihi.org . For more information about Kaiser Permanente scholarships, please visit http://kpnet.kp.org/qrrm/ihi2/ihi_scholarships.htm