A patient safety group organized by the Boston-based Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) is seeking to improve patient safety and overall quality of care by breaking down barriers that it says thwart meaningful collaboration and change.
In a statement about the initiative, Tejal K. Gandhi, MD, MPH, CPPS, IHI’s chief clinical safety officer, wrote that The National Steering Committee for Patient Safety already is setting goals and working to promote the “total systems” approach to safety — “patient safety that is systematic and uniformly applied across all health settings.”
Although the area of patient safety has “seen real progress” in recent years, Gandhi says that “it has been too slow and fragmented.”
She says that a “public health framework” is required. “[It must define] the problem and [set] national goals. It requires collaboration across a variety of stakeholder groups to identify causes of harm and interventions that work,” she added.
Twenty-four organizations are represented on the steering committee, including the American Hospital Association, the American Nurses Association, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, The Joint Commission, the National Quality Forum, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
More information is available online at: https://bit.ly/2KA8aLr.
