Instead of the piecemeal, disjointed efforts to improve patient safety currently happening at institutions across the country, the National Patient Safety Foundation called for a coordinated, systemwide effort to improve delivery of safe care in a report published Monday.
"Call to Action: Preventable Health Care Harm Is a Public Health Crisis and Patient Safety Requires a Coordinated Public Health Response" lays out a public health framework for prevention of harm in healthcare.
"We believe that in order to make meaningful and sustained improvement in patient safety, we need to address it within a public health framework," said Tejal K. Gandhi, MD, president and CEO of NPSF. "The Call to Action outlines a multipronged, ongoing approach to systematically monitor, measure and improve patient safety across the continuum of care through partnerships and collaboration among policymakers, healthcare leaders, professional associations and others."
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In the report, the NPSF details a six-part public health framework that involves all stakeholders in the industry, including healthcare workers, hospital leaders, policymakers and patients and families.
The report's six-part public health framework included recommended actions, which are outlined below. See the full report here.
1. Establish preventable healthcare harm as a public health crisis and commit to reducing it.
2. Create centralized national oversight of patient safety, including a wide assortment of stakeholders.
3. Partner with patient and families and engage them in care and root cause analyses.
4. Create a common set of safety metrics that can be adopted nationwide.
5. Identify causes and interventions that work, such as establishing a culture of safety and providing funding for patient safety research.
6. Educate and train the healthcare workforce.