The National Steering Committee for Patient Safety (NSC) recently issued a Declaration to Advance Patient Safety to urge health care leaders to recommit to ensuring patient and workforce safety.
Convened by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) in 2018, the NSC comprises more than 20 federal agencies and advocacy groups, including America’s Essential Hospitals. The NSC in 2020 released Safer Together: A National Action Plan to Advance Patient Safety, which included recommendations in four foundational areas that broadly affect safety across the continuum of care:
- culture, leadership, and governance;
- patient and family engagement;
- workforce safety; and
- learning systems.
The recent declaration calls for health care leaders to:
- review the 17 recommendations and tactics to advance patient safety presented in Safer Together: A National Action Plan to Advance Patient Safety;
- identify a senior sponsor and core team charged with deploying the Self-Assessment Tool, a companion resource to the National Action Plan; and
- establish and enact strategies, tactics, and measurement and improvement plans to meaningfully fortify and sustain performance in each foundational area.
Contact Senior Director of Policy Erin O’Malley at eomalley@essentialhospitals.org or 202.585.0127 with questions.
