National action plan aims to reenergize hospitals' patient safety efforts

Mackenzie Bean (Twitter) -

An expert committee convened by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement created a national action plan to help health systems refocus and reenergize patient safety efforts. 

The action plan calls for more industrywide collaboration and a larger focus on implementing foundational changes to reduce medical errors. The plan shares insights and recommendations in four interdependent areas:  

  • Culture, leadership and governance
  • Patient and family engagement
  • Workforce safety
  • Learning systems

The document also includes implementation tactics, case examples, tools and other resources to help health systems make improvements in these areas.

The plan comes from the National Steering Committee for Patient Safety, which IHI convened in 2018. The group consists of 27 experts representing federal agencies, safety organizations and patient and family advocacy groups. 

"The action plan helps direct attention to these interdependent areas, which have substantial, wide-ranging influence on many aspects of patient safety," IHI Senior Fellow Tejal Gandhi, MD, co-chair of the steering committee, and chief safety and transformation officer at Press Ganey, said in a news release. "Accelerating improvement in each of these areas will mutually support improvement in others and create the fertile soil that allows broader safety initiatives to take root and be cultivated."

To learn more about the national action plan, click here.

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