SSM Health, furthering its commitment to ensure the safety of patients and staff, joined 15 of the nation’s leading health systems in a recent White House forum with a goal of greatly reducing preventable harm in health care.
Dr. Shephali Wulff, SSM Health’s System Vice President of Quality and Safety, participated in the White House Healthcare Safety Forum, in which health systems committed to actions to provide safe care and zero preventable harm for all. Together, these 16 health systems provide care to more than 30 million patients and employ hundreds of thousands of dedicated health care workers.
“I’m grateful to have represented SSM Health at the White House forum for healthcare safety on World Healthcare Safety Day,” Wulff said. “Our most fundamental responsibility as health care providers is to ensure the safety of our patients and our teams from preventable harm – and we do this by empowering everyone to speak up for safety, understanding how safety events happen, and building processes to prevent harm.”
While the industry experienced difficulties in these areas, the American Hospital Association noted improvements across most health care organizations related to hospital acquired infections, preventable deaths, and surgical safety.
Three panels spotlighted safety work being accomplished at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, Prisma Health and MedStar Health.
Goals of the forum included catalyzing public and private action to achieve a milestone 50 percent reduction in patient and workforce harm, towards the goal of zero preventable harm, and elevating best practices to build on the momentum of recent efforts to enhance patient and workforce safety.
SSM Health is a leader in the area of patient and workforce safety, implementing tangible measures to make its spaces safer. These measures include training in trauma-informed care and de-escalation, establishing security academies, and engaging in public education efforts.
Stephanie Duggan, MD, SSM Health’s Chief Clinical Officer, was also among the healthcare leaders invited to participate in an Aug. 23 White House briefing and listening session on patient and workforce safety. That event was held as a follow-up to the September 2023 report, A Transformational Effort on Patient Safety, issued by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and the work of the National Action Alliance for Patient and Workforce Safety.
