Putting the Patient Back in “Patient Safety” Amid Complexity and Technology Innovation

Healthcare leaders face no shortage of priorities amid growing challenges of patient and healthcare complexity, crisis fatigue, workforce shortages, financial uncertainty, and adapting and stabilizing operations and transforming systems amid rapidly evolving technology innovation. Patients and families are concerned that healthcare’s ultimate duty to provide safe and equitable care is being eclipsed amid these competing realities and that leadership priorities are drifting from what matters to them, including their role in coproducing safety.

This raises critical questions for healthcare leaders:

• Have patient safety and patient experience drifted from the executive agenda and daily work of the healthcare enterprise?


• Will technology innovation offer promise or peril?


• How can healthcare leaders ensure that they are centering coproduction of safety with patients and families in the organization’s work, not as a symbolic gesture but as a strategic, realizable imperative?

A panel of nationally recognized healthcare, patient safety and patient activist leaders will explore gaps, opportunities and the alignment of national initiatives and resources to evaluate and advance meaningful patient and family engagement, using examples from the Safer Together National Action Plan to Advance Patient Safety, co-created with ACHE, the CMS Patient Safety Structural Measure, the ACHE’s Leading a Culture of Safety: A Blueprint for Success, and the Lucian Leape Institute’s Patient Safety and Artificial Intelligence: Opportunities and Challenges for Care Delivery. Discussions will address patient and family perspectives and recommendations for the intentional design of safe, person-centered care amid growing complexity and opportunity, including the use of generative AI. Panelists will highlight concrete leadership actions to assess, improve and maintain the meaningful engagement of patients and families in their own care and in the design and evolution and governance of safe and resilient systems of care. You’ll leave this session with renewed clarity and practical resources for coproducing and accelerating safe, person-centered care and restoring trust and alignment with what matters most to the people we serve.