Maryland’s hospitals are committed to ensuring the safety and well-being of every person in your care.​ The advances in patient safety that you are striving for are needed urgently. As has been widely reported, nationally, more than 250,000 deaths each year may be caused by medical errors.​ Patient Safety Awareness Week, March 10-16, offers a chance to refocus on eliminating harm.

Hospitals have long been dedicated to the proposition that the people they serve must have health insurance, so that they can afford care and so that risks and costs are spread equitably. That enables people to live healthy, productive lives. However, about 1 in 20 Marylanders still lack health insurance. And because of efforts at the federal level to undercut the Affordable Care Act, the number of uninsured once again could rise.

Patient safety and the delivery of quality care are central to every decision Maryland’s health care leaders make. It comes as no surprise, then, that evidence is accumulating showing that our hospitals are making great strides in improving patient safety and raising quality.​

There is a crisis in our state, faced by an estimated one in five Marylanders: mental health and substance use disorders (SUD).​ That is why your Maryland Hospital Association (MHA) created the Behavioral Health Task Force. Fifteen months ago, that group – made up of hospital leaders and experts in mental health and SUD — presented the Roadmap to an Essential, Comprehensive System of Behavioral Health Care for Maryland.

Last week’s tragic shooting outside a Maryland hospital was yet another reminder that health care facilities — seen as safe harbors — are not immune to the violence that plagues our communities.​ That message also was driven home during a recent hospital visit, when executives told me that a spate of multiple-victim shootings in their normally quiet county had truly shaken associates and affected their work performance. The CEO of another hospital lamented countless assaults on hospital staff by both patients and visitors.

Maryland is a national leader in health care, Governor Larry Hogan proclaimed during Wednesday’s State of the State address.​ He held up Maryland’s success under its unique health care financing model against what he described as the health care failures at the federal level.​