The 1999 Institute of Medicine report To Err is Human set off a wave of efforts to reduce errors and increase patient safety around the nation. In Washington state, the leaders of this effort have included Diane Cecchettini, president and CEO of MultiCare Health System in Tacoma, who in 2005 helped to launch the Patient Safety Program at Washington State Hospital Association.

The statewide effort called Safe Table Learning Collaboratives joined together all 97 community hospitals in Washington state to share best practices in improving care. “Statewide collaboration in patient safety was new,” wrote Cecchettini and two co-authors in The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety in May 2011. “Hospitals are often competitors—for patients, physicians, nurses and financing. Washington hospitals recognized the need to set competition aside and help one another achieve high-quality, safe care.”

For her efforts, Cecchettini, 65, in 2011 received the WSHA's Joe Hopkins Memorial Award, which recognizes those who show leadership, warm, persistence, insight, hard work and good humor. Now, she's one of 10 finalists for Modern Healthcare's 2013 Community Leadership Award.

“No one at the time could have possibly imagined the success that would follow with hospitals collaborating across the entire state to improve patient care,” wrote Harry Geller, administrator at Othello Community Hospital, in his nominating letter to the WSHA in 2011. As hospitals have adopted rapid-response teams and hand hygiene compliance protocols, Geller wrote, central-line infections decreased by 64% and ventilator-associate pneumonia has been cut by 58%. This has saved an estimated 1,500 lives and improved the quality of thousands more, he said.

Cecchettini's community service has gone beyond the WSHA and its patient-safety efforts: She also serves on the Executive Council for a Greater Tacoma and has been a champion of the Courage Classic Bicycle Tour, a fundraising effort began more than two decades ago that supports the Rotary Endowment for the Intervention and Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect.

Cecchettini has forged partnerships with local organizations to help stop the cycle of child abuse in MultiCare's service area, she's actively worked to raise funds for the cause—and she participates every year in the three-day, 173-mile bike ride.

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Ed Finkel is a freelance writer in Evanston, Ill. Reach him at edfinkel@earthlink.net