Statements

Latest program in Health and Health Care Innovation multi-year series to focus on taking patient safety to "the next level"

Health care leaders from across the world will convene in Salzburg to help design global principles for measuring patient safety.

Around 50 participants will take part in the Salzburg Global Seminar program, Moving Measurement into Action: Designing Global Principles for Measuring Patient Safety, which begins on Thursday, September 5.

The program is held in partnership with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) and is part of Salzburg Global’s Health and Health Care Innovation multi-year series. Additional support comes from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Mexican Business Council Fellowship Program.

Researchers, design thinkers, patients, providers, and experts in measurement and patient-safety will develop an actionable, cross-continuum framework for safety measurement.

The discussions take place at Schloss Leopoldskron—the historic home of Salzburg Global—and the program includes presentations, panel discussions, and participant-led group work.

The program’s co-chairs are Tejal Gandhi, chief clinical and safety officer of IHI and president of IHI Lucian Leape Institute; Helen Haskell, co-chair of the World Health Organization’s Patients for Patient Safety Advisory Group, and president of Mothers Against Medical Error and Consumers Advancing Patient Safety; and Niek Klazinga, the strategic lead of the Health Care Quality and Outcomes Programme at the OECD.

Participants, who will become Salzburg Global Fellows upon completion of the program, will seek to create:

• A consensus paper outlining recommendations for a framework focused on improving measurement of safety and harm for learning, improvement, and accountability;
• Principles for evaluating the actionability and effectiveness of existing measures and the development of new measures for system safety;
• Recommendations for implementing the framework and selecting valuable measures for health care providers and systems; and
• An ongoing collaboration among participants and their institutions, including policymakers, to implement the recommendations and improve tools and guidelines for measurement.

John Lotherington, the program director at Salzburg Global responsible for the Health and Health Care Innovation multi-year series, said, "In 2001, there was an agenda setting Salzburg program on Patient Safety and Medical Error, in partnership with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI). This helped to establish patient safety as a vital healthcare discipline in its own right. We are delighted that the IHI and the Lucian Leape Institute are returning to Salzburg Global this month as partners in exploring how to take patient safety to the next level, establishing the key principles for evaluating it and acting upon what we know. This is set to have a much needed impact on many patients’ lives, and through them their families and communities."

The Salzburg Global Seminar program, Moving Measurement into Action: Designing Global Principles for Measuring Patient Safety, is part of the Health and Health Care Innovation multi-year series. The program is being held in partnership with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. This program has been supported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.