The National Association for Healthcare Quality® (NAHQ) has conducted groundbreaking research on the advancement of the quality and safety agenda and has published the results in a new workforce report. NAHQ’s Healthcare Quality and Safety Report answers the question: “Is today’s healthcare workforce doing the work that will advance critical priorities of quality, safety, equity, value, and system sustainability?” The answer is no.

Key takeaways from the workforce report:

  • The view of quality has been too narrow – focused more on regulatory and compliance and improvement.
  • The workforce needs to expand the level and type of work being done in quality and safety to ensure they are ready to meet challenges in healthcare.
  • The Healthcare Quality Competency Framework’s eight domains represent all the competencies that must be present in a high-functioning quality organization and are the key to leveraging healthcare’s goals of today or tomorrow. Organizations missing any one component have bases left uncovered.
  • The data shows that the workforce is focused on three competencies, but a stronger focus on all eight is needed now.
    • New data from this report confirms work being completed in quality and safety emphasizes regulatory accreditation, safety, and quality leadership and integration.
    • The analysis also shows that there is too little focus on the domains of population health and care transitions, performance and process improvement, health data analytics, professional engagement, and quality review and accountability 

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