The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is planning to launch an alliance of stakeholders to advance patient safety in 2023.
HHS was a leader in producing a “National Action Plan to Advance Patient Safety.” The National Healthcare System Action Alliance to Advance Patient Safety (the Action Alliance) will be a partnership of healthcare systems, federal partners, patients and families, and other stakeholders to support healthcare delivery organizations in implementing recommendations of the National Action Plan and similar frameworks.
The Action Alliance will be built on the core principles of the National Action Plan and similar efforts. It includes 17 recommendations to advance patient safety, with a focus on eliminating inequities at the point of care. Supplemented by both a Self-Assessment Tool and an Implementation Resource Guide, the plan centers on four foundational and interdependent priority areas:
• Culture, Leadership, and Governance: to demonstrate and foster commitments to safety as a core value and promote the development of safety cultures.
• Patient and Family Engagement: to instill the practice of co-designing and co-producing care with patients, families, and care partners to ensure their meaningful partnership in all aspects of care design, delivery, and operations.
• Healthcare Workforce Safety: to ensure the safety and resiliency of healthcare organizations and workforces as a precondition to advancing patient safety with a unified, total systems-based approach to eliminate harm to both patients and the healthcare workforce.
• Learning System: to foster networked and continuous learning within and across healthcare organizations at all levels to encourage widespread sharing, learning, and improvement.
The Action Alliance will begin as a learning community when it launches in 2023. Over the course of that year, HHS will engage with the Action Alliance participants in sharing evidence-based approaches to improving patient and healthcare worker safety through expert mentorship and peer-to-peer learning.
HHS said it recognizes that healthcare systems will not make rapid progress alone. The Action Alliance itself will include patients and families as partners and inspire healthcare systems to do so as well. Other stakeholders, including professional societies, insurers, employers, the digital health sector, and industry, will be invited to contribute to advancing the National Action Plan and the efforts of the Action Alliance.
An HHS website for this initiative will be created to make all materials developed through the Action Alliance available to the public. The website will also allow healthcare delivery systems, clinicians, patient safety professionals, patients and family advocates, and other stakeholders to participate in learning sessions and receive updates and information on upcoming sessions and events.
The National Healthcare System Action Alliance to Advance Patient Safety will be formally introduced by HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra and HHS leaders on Nov. 14, 2022.
