Day 44: Learning from Berwick

I attended a round table discussion today about how we can best apply learning from Don Berwick’s review of patient safety.  We talked about the need to develop ‘shared purpose’ between commissioners, providers and other stakeholders to achieve the quality of outcomes we all should be aspiring to for patients.

We talked about leadership behaviours and how we, as commissioners, need to role model the behaviours we expect to see from all partners in the health system.

I left the session enthused to look to identify incentives and approaches to commissioning for quality across organisational boundaries, as this is where there is great potential benefit to be gained.  This isn't going to be easy, but when did I ever choose to do something because it was easy?!