The American College of Healthcare Executives and the National Patient Safety Foundation's Lucian Leape Institute are collaborating to create a "playbook" to support leaders in their efforts to build and sustain the kind of organizational culture needed to advance patient and employee safety.
"Leadership is fundamental to creating a culture of safety, yet there is a real need for practical knowledge around how to lead and sustain culture change," said Deborah J. Bowen, president and CEO of ACHE. "This collaboration will provide leaders with strategies they can pursue to improve patient safety, workforce safety and quality of care. Combining the safety expertise of the NPSF Lucian Leape Institute with ACHE's leadership development expertise is an important step toward engaging top leaders in innovative leadership solutions."
NPSF describes a culture of safety as one in which healthcare practitioners are held accountable for unprofessional conduct, but are not punished for making human mistakes. Errors are identified and mitigated before harm occurs, and there are systems in place to enable staff to learn from errors and near-misses, and prevent recurrence.
In the first step of their collaboration, ACHE and NPSF named the co-chairs of the project: Charles D. Stokes and Gary S. Kaplan, MD. Mr. Stokes is executive vice president and COO of Memorial Hermann Health System in Houston, a member of ACHE's board of governors and the 2016-2017 chairman-elect. Dr. Kaplan is chair and CEO of Virginia Mason Health System in Seattle and chair of the NPSF Lucian Leape Institute.
The playbook will be informed by a panel of safety experts, healthcare leaders and stakeholders. The finished product is planned for release in 2017.