Users must register with the IHI site first; registration is free. The Breakthrough Series: IHI’s Collaborative Model for Achieving Breakthrough Improvement can be downloaded free of charge at: http://www.ihi.org/IHI/Results/WhitePapers/TheBreakthroughSeriesIHIsColl... The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) developed the Breakthrough Series to help health care organizations make "breakthrough" improvements in quality while reducing costs. The driving vision behind the Breakthrough Series is this: sound science exists on the basis of which the costs and outcomes of current health care practices can be greatly improved, but much of this science lies fallow and unused in daily work. There is a gap between what we know and what we do. The Breakthrough Series is designed to help organizations close that gap by creating a structure in which interested organizations can easily learn from each other and from recognized experts in topic areas where they want to make improvements. A Breakthrough Series Collaborative is a short-term (6- to 15-month) learning system that brings together a large number of teams from hospitals or clinics to seek improvement in a focused topic area. Since 1995, IHI has sponsored over 50 such Collaborative projects on several dozen topics involving over 2,000 teams from 1,000 health care organizations. Collaboratives range in size from 12 to 160 organizational teams. Each team typically sends three of its members to attend Learning Sessions (three face-to-face meetings over the course of the Collaborative), with additional members working on improvements in the local organization.