Global Health and Safety Initiative

Hospitals are wonderful centers of healing, of new and improved life. Yet hospitals and healthcare in the U.S. have serious patient safety, worker/workplace safety and environmental health and safety problems. Every year millions of Americans suffer complications and tens of thousands die from medical errors. Hospitals workers have the greatest number of non-fatal injuries and illnesses of any industry in the U.S. And hospitals have very large eco-footprints, thus contributing to environmental and health problems in our society. To address these safety issues some of the leading healthcare systems in our country have joined with non-profits, governmental organizations, group purchasing organizations, academic institutions and others to form a new social movement in healthcare --- the Global Health and Safety Initiative (GHSI). The GHSI is developing tools, approaches, best practices and a research and public policy agenda to transform hospital design, operations and practices to become safer and greener. This presentation will discuss the case for change; the synergy among patient, workplace and environmental health and safety; why this change needs to be more global than just clinical efforts or just one hospital or health system at a time; the model for change and how designing safer and greener hospitals; using combined purchasing power for safer and more sustainable goods, products, and materials; sharing operational best practices; linking these to evidence-based and outcomes research, and developing relevant public policy positions can help make hospital, healthcare, and by extension society, safer and greener.