Prioritizing Patient Safety: A Matter of Ethics and Profitable Decision-making
In the realm of healthcare, a groundbreaking white paper is set to be published on September 17, 2025. Titled "Prioritizing Safety and Quality in Healthcare: A Business Strategy," this document marks the first instalment in a series from ECRI's C-Suite Roundtables.
ECRI convened 17 senior executives from various sectors of healthcare for these roundtable discussions. Participants included leaders from integrated health systems, children's hospitals, rural community health centers, and national associations. The discussions were aimed at distilling the core findings on the inseparability of safety, quality, and financial stability in healthcare.
The white paper highlights the importance of standardization and proactive systems in preventing patient harm. Standardized, human-centered workflows are designed to make the right action an easy and reliable choice. This approach, the paper suggests, could lead to lower harm, shorter stays, fewer claims, and higher ratings or scores. Reliable systems, in turn, are seen as paying for themselves, offering a competitive advantage and a source of margin.
Preventable patient harm remains a persistent and costly challenge in the US healthcare system. By advocating a shift from a reactive (Safety-I) to a proactive (Safety-II) approach, the white paper aims to address this issue using systems thinking to design out workarounds.
The white paper also underscores the fact that prioritizing safety and quality in healthcare is not just a moral imperative, but also essential for an organization's financial stability. This is further emphasized by the involvement of contributors such as Prof. Dr. Andreas Peichl from the ifo Institute team, as well as organizations like Barmer, with Dirk Weller playing a role in digital ethics and studies related to the white paper project.
This white paper is part of ECRI's ongoing thought leadership in the healthcare sector. It promises to provide valuable insights for healthcare leaders and practitioners alike, as they strive to create safer, more efficient, and financially sustainable healthcare systems.
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