To jumpstart progress toward achieving the goals of the Roadmap to Health Care Safety for Massachusetts, the Betsy Lehman Center and Massachusetts Healthcare Safety and Quality Consortium will guide five initial action steps in the coming year.

As with all work associated with the Roadmap, the actions reflect recognition that systematic change comes from making sure that people have the information they need to do safety work, support in implementing change, and appropriate incentives to prioritize safety work.

The initial five action steps will:

• Create a statewide program of foundational health care safety education through development of a safety curriculum designed for diverse care settings and roles.
• Pilot a program of technical assistance and support to help small office practices implement right-sized continuous improvement systems that advance patient and workforce safety​.
• Pilot a voluntary program that applies automated surveillance of hospital electronic health records to detect and analyze a wide range of patient safety risks and events and enables a response and learning to reduce future harm​.
• Support Massachusetts hospitals and ACOs in building the capacity of Patient and Family Advisory Councils (PFACs) to participate in organizational safety improvement structures and activities​.
• Through an interagency/multistakeholder task force, improve state health care safety data systems by streamlining reporting processes, addressing data duplication and gaps, and promoting appropriate data sharing .

Betsy Lehman Center Executive Director Barbara Fain says preliminary work is already underway and that the Center will convene advisory groups with expertise to guide the work.

“Each initial action step represents a new or enhanced way to affect meaningful change,” Fain says. “Having worked with partner organizations on the strategic plan for several years, we are very excited to expand and continue our partnerships and move this work forward.”