Q&A: IHI and NPSF merge to push patient safety initiatives

Editor’s note: In March, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) and the National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF) announced that they would merge starting May 1. The two organizations have been leaders in the patient safety field for years, and there is much hope stemming from their collaboration. The following is a lightly edited Q&A with Tejal K. Gandhi, MD, MPH, CPPS, NPSF president and CEO, about what the merger will mean for the combined organization, now called the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. As of May 1, she is the Institute’s new chief clinical and safety officer.

PSMJ: How did this merger come to be, and how long have you been planning it?
Gandhi: The rationale behind our merger is straightforward: We want to ensure that safety is a central part of every organization’s improvement strategy today, and that the safety of patients and the healthcare workforce becomes a core value of healthcare systems around the world.

IHI and NPSF have actually worked together intermittently for many years. More recently, however, we’ve shared a concern that while progress is being made in patient safety, there are also many other competing priorities in healthcare. With that in mind, we started talking about working more closely together to further raise the profile and urgency of patient safety. 

Over time, we came to the conclusion that the way to offer health professionals and patient safety advocates (including patients) the best resources, tools, and teaching to deliver the safest care would be to formally combine our strengths into a single organization.

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