AHA Patient Safety Initiative
What is the Patient Safety Initiative?
The Patient Safety Initiative is a collaborative, data-driven effort that gives hospitals and health systems a strong voice in the national conversation around health care safety, and telling the hospital and health system patient safety story.
Patient Safety Leadership Perspectives
Highlighting shifts in post-COVID-19 health care quality, the AHA Quality Collective emphasizes clinical strengths and priorities. The Patient Safety Initiative extends QC success, empowering hospitals in national safety discussions.
Goals of the Patient Safety Initiative
Increase:
- Engagement in patient safety
- Public trust in hospitals and health systems
- Accurate, meaningful data
- Development of improvement tools and strategies
- Uptake of evidence-based and equity-grounded patient safety measures
- Development of insights to feed advocacy
Decrease:
- Preventable harms
- Inequity and health disparities
- Administrative reporting burden
- Misinformation and disinformation surrounding patient safety
- Collection of data that is unnecessary or compromises patient privacy
Summary
All hospitals and health systems strive to deliver safe, high-quality care to every patient they serve. Our field has led the way in making bold changes to drive improvement in outcomes for decades, and we know that the dramatic improvements we have seen since the landmark 1999 Institute of Medicine report are a direct result of that leadership.
We also know that in recent years the unprecedented strain of battling COVID-19 and its aftershocks made it significantly more challenging for hospitals and health systems as they worked to advance safety and quality. Yet, we know the best way to make care safer and better is not more regulation; rather, it is our field’s ongoing collaboration and innovation to drive safety forward. As a result, hospital and health system leaders have shared with AHA their passion to work together to reinforce and accelerate our field’s patient safety efforts.
Guided by a clinical advisory panel and a strategic advisory group, the Patient Safety Initiative aims to reduce patient harms, increase health equity, and improve public trust. This will be achieved by shifting the national conversation on patient safety and enhancing collaboration among hospitals, health systems and partners. By leveraging research, engagement, data and public storytelling, AHA will convene stakeholders and support members in transforming the patient safety landscape.
The AHA launched a national initiative to boldly reaffirm hospital and health system leadership and commitment to patient safety.
The foundational areas of focus in 2024 include:
- fostering a culture of safety from the board room to the bedside;
- identifying and addressing inequities in safety;
- enhancing workforce safety; and
- integrating innovation into best practices.