More than 15 years after the Institute of Medicine's landmark report on patient safety, the National Patient Safety Foundation is convening a panel of experts in Boston this week to assess the state of the safety movement and where it needs to go.
“The purpose is to take a critical look at what has been achieved in patient safety since the IOM (report), analyze why it has not gone faster and make recommendations for accelerating the process,” said Dr. Lucian Leape, an adjunct professor at the Harvard School of Public Health who served on the committee that wrote the IOM's 1999 report, To Err is Human.
Former CMS Administrator Dr. Don Berwick, who also helped write the report, will co-chair the panel with Dr. Kaveh Shojania, director of the University of Toronto's Centre for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety. A third panelist, Dr. Mark Chassin, CEO of the Joint Commission, also was a member of the group that wrote the IOM report.
Panel member Helen Haskell, an NPSF trustee, said she'd like to see more efforts to establish greater transparency in healthcare quality. “We're on that road, but I'd like to see it go a little faster,” said Haskell, whose young son died as the result of a medical error.
Dr. Tejal Gandhi, CEO of the safety foundation, said the panel's discussions will be published in a report this summer containing recommendations on key areas for future focus. She would like to see more attention given to patient safety in physician offices, nursing homes, dialysis centers and other non-hospital settings.
