Faster by a power of 10: a PLAN for accelerating national adoption of evidence-based practices

Despite a decade of heightened focus on quality improvement, evidence continues to move slowly and incompletely into practice. To improve the quality of care, national improvement efforts must accelerate the spread of evidence-based practices. We propose an ambitious goal: to increase the speed of adoption of evidence-based practices by a power of 10, from 17 years to 1.7 years, and present a 4-step PLAN to achieve this. The PLAN components are: Performance-identify performance gaps and set specific, measurable aims; Leadership-hospital and health system leaders support implementation and dissemination of evidence-based practices in their facilities; Alignment-align education and dissemination efforts with national policy drivers; and Next-continue to refine the implementation process to successfully address the next improvement opportunity.