In October 2007, Dr. Berwick of the Institute for Health Improvement, based in Cambridge, charted a new course for providing healthcare in this country. He proposed a conceptual framework that is designed to improve the patient’s care experience, while at the same time reduce the cost of care and attend to improved health of populations of people. Simply called the Triple Aim, it calls for a strategic focus on all three dimensions at once. There has been no time previously that healthcare in the United States has been focused on all three domains at one time. A radical idea at first, the Triple Aim has now entered the mainstream and many healthcare organizations have adopted its tenets.
Organizations and communities that, in fact, attain the Triple Aim (or come close to it) have healthier populations to care for, have better coordinated care, and reduce the per capita cost of care.