IHI Hosts Panel to Develop Patient Safety Action Plan

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Ahead of this week’s 20th annual IHI/NPSF Patient Safety Congress in Boston, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) is hosting a meeting today with representatives from 24 organizations to come up with a national strategy for improving patient safety in healthcare.

Dubbed the National Steering Committee for Patient Safety, the group is being led by co-chairs Tejal K. Gandhi, MD, MPH, CPPS, the IHI’s chief clinical and safety officer, and Jeffrey Brady, MD, MPH, director of the Center for Quality Improvement at the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). The committee was established in the wake of last year’s call to action issued by the National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF), which merged with the IHI in 2017. The call to action urged a coordinated response from the healthcare and public health sectors to reduce medical harm.

In an interview with PSQH, Gandhi and Brady said the committee will establish a timeline for the action plan this week. The panel will meet quarterly, with subcommittees to work on several focus areas.

“We’re hoping by the start of the new year, we’ll have an action plan,” Gandhi said. “Over the next couple of years, we’ll carry it out.”

The committee plans to focus on foundational areas including culture, leadership, education and training, and patient engagement.

“The field of patient safety and quality has progressed over the years I’ve been involved with it,” said Brady. “There’s a bit more focus on the foundational issues.”

That said, he noted, the committee isn’t losing sight of specific issues such as medication safety and pressure ulcers.

“We’re discovering more about things that need attention,” Brady said. But the broader action plan is necessary because “you can’t just keep doing a project-by-project approach.”

Gandhi said the subcommittees, which will have between 10 and 15 members, will look at process and outcome measures. A similar action plan effort has been created by the Canadian Patient Safety Institute, she added.

A major focus of the effort will be patient involvement.

“The most important thing is having patients at the table,” said Brady. “Patient and family engagement is an important foundational approach.”

Gandhi said much progress has been made over the last 18 years in terms of patient involvement, including the creation of patient-family advisory councils, patient participation in root cause analyses, and the inclusion of patients on national committees.

“The engagement of patients has really increased, but we need to do a lot more still,” she added.

The National Steering Committee for Patient Safety includes representatives from the following groups:

  • American Association of Retired Persons
  • American Board of Medical Specialties
  • American College of Healthcare Executives
  • American College of Physicians
  • American Hospital Association
  • American Nurses Association
  • AHRQ
  • Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
  • CMS
  • Children’s Hospitals’ Solutions for Patient Safety
  • DNV GL – Healthcare
  • ECRI Institute
  • IHI and the IHI/NPSF Lucian Leape Institute
  • Institute for Safe Medication Practices
  • The Joint Commission
  • Mothers Against Medical Error
  • National Association for Healthcare Quality
  • National Quality Forum
  • Nurses Alliance for Quality Care
  • Occupational Safety and Health Administration
  • Project Patient Care
  • Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine
  • S. Food and Drug Administration
  • VA National Center for Patient Safety, Veterans Health Administration