Co-Founder, Patients for Patient Safety US
Patients for Patient Safety US
Beth Daley Ullem, MBA, is a nationally recognized governance expert and committed activist for safety and quality in health care. Beth works with health system leadership teams, boards, and industry leaders to advance the quality and safety of patient care.
Beth is the founder of Quality and Safety First, a governance advisory firm that supports health systems on their board quality and safety responsibilities. Beth was the project lead and lead author for the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) White Paper: Framework for Effective Governance of Health System Quality. This work created innovative tools to assess and accelerate board governance of quality, known as the Governance of Quality Assessment (GQA).
Beyond her governance work, Beth is one of the founders of Patients for Patient Safety US, the leading national patient advocacy chapter in the U.S. and the US chapter of the World Health Organization committed to advancing the Global Patient Safety Action Plan through better accountability and incentives in the safety ecosystem and innovation in safety science and technology.
Beth has published several articles in leading medical journals to advance patient-centered innovation in safe care and national prioritization of safer care. She was also an expert contributor to Leading a Culture of Safety: A Blueprint for Success and the Lucien Leape Institute’s White Papers entitled Shining a Light: Safer Healthcare Through Transparency and Patient Safety and Artificial Intelligence: Opportunities and Challenges for Care Delivery. She also contributed on the governance guidelines for the HHS National Action Plan to Advance Patient Safety and other national healthcare metric development efforts.
Beth serves on the board of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. She formerly served on the board of Solutions for Patient Safety (SPS), a 100+-hospital pediatric safety network, the Board of Governors of the National Patient Safety Foundation, the Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine (SIDM) and the Center for Healthcare Value (now Catalysis). Beth also formerly served on the system boards of Thedacare and the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin Health System.
Beth has also created a philanthropic innovation fund to seed innovation in the space of safety innovation and transparency after harm. Her passion for safety innovation and patient-centered care is driven by the loss of her son to a medical error in 2003 and her desire for all patients to have safe and respectful care and transparent clinical and quality outcomes.
Beth is a former consultant with McKinsey & Company and DePaul University professor of business. Beth has an MBA from Northwestern and her undergraduate degree in economics from Georgetown University. She lives in California with her husband and three children.
Putting the Patient Back in "Patient Safety" Amid Complexity and Technology Innovation
Monday, March 2, 2026
4:30pm - 5:30pm CT