Wendy Nickel
October 28, 2021
Only two weeks until our Partnership for Patient Care 2021 Leadership Summit! As with most events during the past 18 months or so, the Summit has taken on a bit of a different direction this year. During the late spring and summer of 2021, we were deep in the throes of hopeful menu planning for our first in-person event in over a year. Deciding whether to serve wasabi tuna sliders or bruschetta on focaccia felt very important at the time. However, as COVID-19’s Delta variant began to surge in the mid to late summer, it became clear that we had a responsibility to our partners and health care stakeholders to move to a virtual event.
Although mainstays like the Delaware Valley Patient Safety and Quality Awards will continue to be a part of the program, the virtual platform has given us an opportunity to try new ways of delivering important content. We are thrilled to welcome Dr. Tejal Gandhi, Press Ganey’s Chief Transformation Officer, as our keynote speaker this year. Focusing on our theme of health equity, Dr. Gandhi will be providing critical insights about the connections between patient safety and equity. We will also have the opportunity to hear from leaders throughout the region about their health-systems’ health equity journeys. This virtual panel discussion will be moderated by Sara Lomax-Reese, CEO of WURD Radio.
While we had hoped to toast in person, we will have a virtual celebration of the 15th anniversary of our Partnership for Patient Care (PPC) program. We will be featuring virtual memories from the past 15 years of excellence in quality and safety from the program creators, participants, and HCIF staff. As we have recounted its history in planning for the Annual Summit, PPC has truly been a remarkable achievement. PPC’s original mission was to support the region in providing the highest quality and safest care in the country. Through the hard work and dedication of over 2,000 participants over the years, we are proud to say that PPC has contributed to reductions in hospital acquired infections, wrong site surgeries, and readmissions. It has also led to more transparent discussions about patient safety, and has allowed health-systems to share best practices without fear of retribution.
Today, PPC is recalibrating its focus on equity through a recently-launched program related to the collection of race, ethnicity and language data (REaL). The Health Equity Data Strategy (HEDS) program will provide organizations with the opportunity to evaluate their REaL data collection and utilization practices and learn about strategies to improve healthcare disparities. PPC’s evolution from safety to now include equity has been part of a natural progression in response to the needs of our region. I am so very proud of this program, the HCIF staff who lead it (Pam, Liz, Kaynaat, and Cassidy) and those who have been involved over the years. I am eager to see where we will end up 15 years from now.
Although we will have to forgo pigs in a blanket and hummus and carrots this year, the Annual Summit promises to deliver critical perspectives on health equity and serve as a celebration of PPC’s achievements over the past 15 years. We hope you’ll join us as we honor the past and look forward to the future.