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eight dimensions of care, distilled from years of patient interviews—underlay almost all the deliberations and recommendations of Crossing the Quality Chasm. These eight dimensions formed the basis for the STEEEP principles that still undergird our quality measurement framework.

      More than two decades later, where do we stand? In some ways, patient engagement has been one of the big successes in patient safety and quality. The patient voice is increasingly prevalent throughout much of the health care system. We have patient and family advisory boards, family‐centered rounds, patient‐activated rapid response, shared decision‐making, and medical error disclosure programs. Crucially, we have patient surveys as a measure on which health care providers are assessed. Patient‐reported outcome measures are also now a part of many treatment programs.

      Yet in many ways, patients have yet to be fully integrated as functional members of their own health care teams. System‐wide transparency and centralized, patient‐centered safety reporting systems, fundamental components of patient engagement, remain largely unfulfilled goals. Health equity is finally being recognized as a threat to safety and quality, but strategies to address it are only beginning to evolve. Effective ways of involving patients in the essential outpatient functions of diagnosis and medication safety are still being worked out. Two bright spots are the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s Safer Together national action plan and the World Health Organization’s Global Patient Safety Action Plan, both of which propose to achieve these and other aims by creating broad learning systems with patient partnership at all levels. If we want to improve, this is the future of health care.

      Social Determinants of Health

      In 2018, the IHI convened the first National Steering Committee (NSC) representing 27 professional organizations committed to improving patient safety and quality, who “refuse to accept preventable harm” (NSC, 2020a), a commitment built over the past 20 years. The result is the report Safer Together: A National Action Plan to Advance Patient Safety (http://www.ihi.org/SafetyActionPlan). The groundbreaking report is accompanied by a Self‐Assessment Tool (NSC, 2020b) to get started and an Implementation Resource Guide (NSC, 2020c). The report includes measurement guidance on evaluating structures and processes specific to the recommendations.

      The report recognizes progress and innovations in patient safety, yet preventable harm remains pervasive. It also recognizes the progress in working together interprofessionally, noting that the steering committee represents all health professions, with even more diversity represented among the four subcommittees; nurses were represented in all aspects, which also represents the commitment to the need to ensure safety for all health care workers. Interdependently working together will be the key to successful implementation.

      1 Work together to drive greater urgency to prevent harm to patients and those who care for them in all settings across the care continuum.

      2 Strengthen the foundation for eliminating harm by ensuring that leaders actively promote a culture of safety, the spread of learning systems, patient and family engagement, and workforce safety.

      3 Partner with patients, families, and care partners and commit to open, honest, and respectful communication to create safe, person‐centered health care.

      4 Coordinate and collaborate to achieve large‐scale, sustainable improvement in safety.

      5 Transparently share successes and failures within and across organizations and industries to promote learning and improve outcomes for all.

      6 Advance health equity so that everyone has the safest care, and no one is disadvantaged due to demographic characteristics or social determinants.

      7 Support policies and regulations that will improve patient safety.

      Source: Institute for Healthcare Improvement, 2020.

Schematic illustration of national Action Plan for Patient Safety: four foundational themes.

      Source: Institute for Healthcare Improvement, 2020.

      Three further cross‐cutting themes relate to each theme and specify how each should be enacted:

       Person‐centered care.

       Care across the continuum.

       Relationship between patient safety and health equity.

      Systemic biases in health care show concentrated harm to certain populations specific to race, ethnicity, sex, gender, age, and socioeconomics. All organizations are urged to apply the recommendations as the way forward to eliminate patient harm.

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