The co-chairs of the Joint Committee on Health Care Financing Rep. John Lawn (D-Watertown) and Senator Cindy Friedman (D-Arlington) co-hosted a forum at the State House recently on patient safety.

Betsy Lehman Center Executive Director Barbara Fain said at the January forum, “We’d like to be able to say that high rates of patient harm are a thing of the past. But we can’t.”

Dr. Abha Agrawal, CEO and president of Lawrence General Hospital, spoke at the forum about approaches to safety improvement at the hospital that include keeping the leadership and board members informed about adverse events, empowering frontline workers to speak up about concerns, and taking action to build safety cultures.

MHA’s V.P. of Health Equity Izzy Lopes also spoke on how when a patient is harmed they are more than a statistic on a hospital’s dashboard.

“It’s one thing to appropriately treat a patient from a medical perspective,” Lopes said. “And then there’s another thing entirely about treating patients with dignity, treating them with respect and ensuring they feel heard … I feel very strongly that there’s no decision that can be made, no strategic decision that hospitals are making all the time, without the patient voice.”

Fain introduced the Lehman Center’s annual report which found:

• Serious preventable harm to patients happens daily across the state’s continuum of care;

• High rates of harm are driving up costs and straining capacity across the system;

• Unsafe care exacerbates healthcare inequities as certain patient populations, particularly Black patients, are more likely to be harmed;

• Harm events also impact the healthcare workforce in myriad ways, contributing to burnout and attrition; and

• Lack of timely, reliable data on safety outcomes remains a leading barrier to progress.