NPSF convenes panel to set plans for progress

The National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF) will convene an expert panel to assess the state of the patient safety field and to set the stage for the next 15 years of work.

Co-chaired by Donald Berwick, MD, MPP, former administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and president emeritus and senior fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, and Kaveh Shojania, MD, director of the Centre for Quality and Improvement and Patient Safety, University of Toronto, and editor-in-chief of BMJ Quality & Safety, the panel will meet in Boston and produce a retrospective of achievement in the field and develop strategic recommendations for future focus.

“One of the goals of this project is to galvanize the field to move forward with a unified view of the future of patient safety and with an eye toward the NPSF vision of creating a world where patients and those who care for them are free from harm,” said Tejal K. Gandhi, MD, MPH, CPPS, NPSF president and CEO in a release. “We are pleased and honored to have Drs. Berwick and Shojania leading this effort.”

Berwick was a member of the Institute of Medicine’s Quality of Care in America Committee, which produced To Err Is Human and Crossing the Quality Chasm, influential reports addressing healthcare safety and quality. “We have learned a lot about patient safety and the prevention of medical errors since the publication of those reports, but we recognize that there is more work to be done,” said Berwick. “We expect a lively, broad discussion to not only look at where we’ve been, but also set the course for the future priorities in patient safety and healthcare quality.”

The panel is expected to produce a report offering strategic recommendations to drive patient safety through the next decade and beyond. “We’ve seen a tremendous increase in patient safety research over the last 15 years,” said Shojania. “While reviewing this evidence will play a role in informing the report, we really hope to use the input from a wide range of experts and stakeholders to map out where the field needs to go from here in order to achieve some real breakthroughs in the coming years.”

The panel’s meeting, “The State of Patient Safety: 15 Years Since the IOM Report ‘To Err is Human,’” takes place Feb. 23-24 with a report expected this summer.