The Institute for Healthcare Improvement on May 22 introduced a committee tasked with creating a national strategy to improve patient safety.
The National Steering Committee for Patient Safety includes 24 organizations with backgrounds in healthcare, policy, regulation and advocacy. Member organizations include The Joint Commission, the National Quality Forum, the American Hospital Association and the FDA.
Tejal K. Gandhi, MD, chief clinical and safety officer at IHI, and Jeffrey Brady, MD, director of the Center for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety at the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, will co-chair the committee.
The group's first meeting is set for May 22 in Boston, ahead of the 20th Annual IHI/NPSF Patient Safety Congress.
"For decades, experts have called for increased coordination to improve patient safety, but such a strategy has not been fully instituted," Dr. Gandhi said. "There is still so much work to be done in patient safety, in part because we've reached the limits of what a project-by-project approach can achieve. Instead of declaring 'mission accomplished,' we need to take steps to advance total systems safety — safety that is reliably and uniformly applied wherever care is provided."