White House Unveils Sweeping Health Care Safety Efforts: 8 Notes

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, a division of HHS, has partnered with other federal agencies and health systems to create a national safety alliance as part of broader commitments from the federal government to reduce preventable harm and improve care quality industrywide.

The alliance was among efforts shared at the White House Sept. 17 during a forum on patient safety hosted by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology — a working group of more than two dozen thought leaders in the academic, government and private sectors. AHRQ first shared the concept of a national safety alliance in 2023, with more details emerging at the forum.

Eight things to know:

1. The National Action Alliance for Patient and Workforce Safety is a collective of federal agencies, heath systems, medical associations, policymakers and patient groups that will work together to apply evidence-based harm reduction strategies across all populations and settings, according to an AHRQ overview. The first area of focus will be hospital care settings.
2. The alliance will rely on a total-systems approach to safety improvement and align with the  National Action Plan to Advance Patient Safety, which aims to reduce preventable harm by 50% by 2026. Participating systems will conduct a baseline safety assessment to identify priority areas for improvement. Through the alliance, they’ll have access to implementation support, funding opportunities and other resources to support improvement efforts.
3. On Nov. 1, the alliance will release an initial version of a dashboard to monitor the nation’s progress toward eliminating preventable patient and workplace harms across all settings.
4. As part of the federal government’s broader efforts to improve safety in healthcare, the CDC has also released new guidance to support hospitals in reducing diagnostic errors — which are responsible for nearly 800,000 deaths per year. The CDC will also develop new measures to advance recognition and treatment of sepsis.
5. The White House also secured commitments from 22 national and regional organizations to promote a “whole-of-society approach” to healthcare safety. For example, Press Ganey has committed to building an AI-backed analytics dashboard next year that will integrate key safety data points on patient outcomes, the workforce, safety culture and more. The Association of American Medical Colleges also plans to share a revised set of education competencies that focus on safety and quality improvement skills for physicians.
6. In addition, the White House said 16 systems have committed to safety improvement actions. Together, these systems provide healthcare to more than 30 million patients and employ hundreds of thousands of workers
7. In another initiative, the Veterans Health Administration, a component of the Department of Veterans Affairs, will roll out a new national program next year to prevent falls across care settings. All VA health system leaders will also sign a safety culture commitment by mid-2025.
8. The patient safety alliance’s launch comes a little over a month after CMS added seven new measures to its hospital inpatient quality reporting program as part of its Hospital Inpatient Prospective Payment System final rule released Aug. 1. The patient safety measure will take effect in 2025. The patient safety structural measures assess whether hospitals have a structure and culture that prioritize safety through five domains: leadership committed to eliminating preventable harm; strategic planning and organizational policy; a culture of safety and learning; accountability and transparency; and patient and family engagement, according to a CMS final rule.