The impetus for quality comes in many forms. Alice has co-authored an article with James L. Reinertsen, MD in the November/December 2005 issue of Health Affairs, "
The 100,000 Lives Campaign: Crystallizing Standards of Care for Hospitals", which makes the case that IHI's 100,000 Lives Campaign has changed overnight the legal standard of care for hospitals throughout this country --- whether they enrolled in the campaign or not. We elucidate why. We speculate on the kinds of cases which failure to implement the six planks of the campaign will generate. We look at the top ten reasons hospitals get sued and place the planks in that context. Risk avoidance certainly adds to the business case for quality. And then we say why fear of malpractice liability is not the real reason to implement the six planks. Moral reasons and a call to the true mission of health care enterprises are the real motivations to prevent preventable deaths.