Safer Together: A national action plan to advance patient safety

Healthcare leaders have a duty to ensure that their organisations are safe for those receiving care and for those providing it. Despite the efforts of many organisations across the United States, progress in patient safety improvement remains limited. Lack of a unifying strategy and challenges with coordination have limited substantial improvements in patient safety. In response, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement convened a group of national organisations that formed the National Steering Committee (NSC) for Patient Safety. The NSC’s charter was to develop ‘Safer Together: A National Action Plan to Advance Patient Safety’ (Safer Together). Guided by core principles, Safer Together focuses on four foundational and interdependent areas: culture, leadership and governance; patient and family engagement; workforce safety and the learning system. Safer Together provided 17 recommendations and related tactics across each of the four foundational areas. The recommendations are supported by an organisational Self-Assessment Tool and an Implementation Resource Guide. The Safer Together action plan highlights important interdependencies among the foundational areas and the coordination and collaboration that are necessary to drive safety improvement, as well as the importance of ensuring equity in all four foundational areas. Patient and healthcare worker safety should garner more attention as the US healthcare system continues to shift from fee-for-service to valuebased payment. As a result, organisations that maintain safety as a core value will be better situated to respond to the changing reimbursement landscape. Leadership must establish safety as a core value of the organisation, then leverage their influence to foster and sustain the implementation of the foundational areas and the recommendations. Organisations that devote resources towards ensuring safety are better positioned to improve value because of less harm to both patients and staff. The following sections of this paper describe in more detail the foundational areas outlined in Safer Together, provide practical examples of what success looks like and underscore the role of the healthcare leader as a structural linchpin.