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ASCA President Mark Wainner Takes Part in White House Health Forum

Participants discuss patient safety and quality, health equity, and progress in the industry

BY SAHELY MUKERJI | SEPTEMBER 18, 2024

Earlier this week, ASCA participated in the White House Healthcare Safety Forum hosted by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to recognize World Patient Safety Day on September 17. Mark Wainner, ASCA Board president and senior director of ASC Acquisition and Development at Community Health Systems in Franklin, Tennessee, attended the forum on ASCA’s behalf.

ASCA staff were made aware of the forum through the association’s relationship with the Emergency Care Research Institute (ECRI) of Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania. ASCA reached out to the White House to talk about ASCA and the ASC Quality Collaboration’s (ASCQC) efforts to improve patient safety and quality in surgery centers. That outreach led directly to the White House inviting an ASCA representative to attend the forum, Wainner says, and “the Biden administration leadership recognized and valued our role with ASCs.”

One of the goals of the forum was to “elevate best practices and build on the momentum of recent efforts to enhance patient and workforce safety,” according to the forum’s invitation letter. “One such safety effort is a new tool, the ASC Safety & Quality Assessment, that the ASCQC recently introduced and which ASCA is promoting,” Wainner says. The ASCQC develops and tests quality measures focused on patient safety and quality improvement in surgery centers. These measures support the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) Ambulatory Surgical Center Quality Reporting Program and allow surgery centers to benchmark their commitment to safety and promote improvement. “The new tool, accessible to the more than 6,300 Medicare-certified surgery centers in the US, can be used to assess a center against the expected standard of care on a wide range of attributes that define a safe, high-quality site of care,” he says. “This tool got us a seat at the forum.”

The other participants at the forum included administrative leaders in the Biden administration, and representation from provider organizations, healthcare associations and companies supporting the industry, Wainner says. “Discussions covered progress in the industry, patient safety and quality outcomes, identifying and addressing health equity, workforce safety, and wellbeing and empowering the patient’s voice in safety. We ended with small breakout sessions and a call to action to continue to work collaboratively between the public and private sectors to improve patient safety and quality outcomes.”

“It was an honor to represent ASCs at the forum,” Wainner says. “ASCA is the leading ASC advocate and ASCs are recognized as an important part of the US healthcare delivery system. We have made significant progress; however, there is still much work to be done to address and improve on the topics discussed.”