BACKGROUND: What can health care organizations and clinicians learn from submarine warfare and industries as varied as nuclear power, aerospace, education and hospitality? That’s a question the inaugural Forum on Emerging Topics in Patient Safety, presented by the Johns Hopkins Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality and the World Health Organization, seeks to answer. The three-day event will bring together creative thinkers, scholars, teachers and leaders from health care, government, consumer research and business with the goal of significantly accelerating the pace of improvement in patient safety.

Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, pilot of the airliner that safely landed in the frigid Hudson River in the winter of 2009, will provide a keynote talk, as will Peter Pronovost, M.D., Ph.D., Armstrong Institute director and Johns Hopkins Medicine’s senior vice president for patient safety and quality. Breakout sessions will feature a former space shuttle commander, the chief medical officer for Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the director of Consumer Reports’ Health Ratings Center and the coauthor of three New York Times bestsellers about organizational transformation.

WHY: Preventable patient harm is costly: It’s the third leading cause of death in the United States and contributes to an estimated $800 billion—one third of all health care costs—spent each year on unneeded or inefficiently delivered care. Safety experts say that despite tremendous efforts and enthusiasm to improve patient safety, health care has made only modest strides. By bringing together key stakeholders in health care and experts from other fields, organizers of the forum plan to identify novel collaborations that reduce harm, improve the lives and experiences of patients and reduce costs of care.

WHEN: Monday, Sept. 23, 2013, to Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2013Keynote presentations on Monday, 9:30-11:45 a.m.See event agenda for more details

WHERE: Hilton Baltimore401 W. Pratt StreetBaltimore, Maryland 21201

CONTACT: To interview speakers or cover the forum, please contact Shannon Swiger, Johns Hopkins Medicine media relations, at [email protected] or 443-287-8560. Please RSVP for in-person attendance or for details on how to view keynote presentations live online. RELATED EVENTS: In addition to the forum, the Armstrong Institute is hosting several related events the week of Sept. 23. Those include a two-day national conference on best practices in patient-centered care, a workshop on social determinants of health and training sessions on how tools such as Lean Sigma and human factors engineering can improve the patient experience and reduce waste. For more details on these events, please see the online calendar of events.