The National Healthcare System Action Alliance To Advance Patient Safety

For more than two decades the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has been committed to improving patient safety in healthcare delivery. As part of this work, HHS was a leader in recently producing Safer Together: A National Action Plan to Advance Patient Safety. Moving forward, HHS is planning an initiative to support healthcare delivery organizations in implementing recommendations of the National Action Plan and similar frameworks. HHS intends to co-create The National Healthcare System Action Alliance to Advance Patient Safety (The Action Alliance) in partnership with healthcare systems, Federal partners, patients and families, and other stakeholders.

As the Nation's healthcare delivery systems recover and transform as they emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, there are many emerging priorities, including improving equity, addressing Long COVID, harnessing the potential of telehealth and data sciences, responding to climate change, expanding access to behavioral healthcare, and supporting the well-being of healthcare workers. Patient safety is integral to all these priorities. Patient and healthcare worker safety is not a separate priority; it is central to everything healthcare systems do.

The Action Alliance will be built on the core principals of the National Action Plan and similar efforts:

1. Culture, Leadership, and Governance: to demonstrate and foster commitments to safety as a core value and promote the development of safety cultures.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. Learning System: to foster networked and continuous learning within and across healthcare organizations at all levels to encourage widespread sharing, learning, and improvement.

In keeping with the fourth principle, 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 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 was formally introduced by HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra and HHS leaders on November 14, 2022. A video of this important livestream will be shared shortly.