Time was, patient safety was a little bit like the weather: A lot of people would talk about it, but few would or could do anything about it. Times have changed!

March 7 marks the beginning of the third annual National Patient Safety Awareness Week, where this year's theme is "The Power of Partnership." The progress we've seen in the past year underscores the fact that collaboration and partnership are necessary conditions to making true progress in promoting a culture of safety in all health care settings.

As we reported in last month's Vital Signs, The Institute of Medicine held its first follow-up conference to its groundbreaking report, Crossing the Quality Chasm. The conference brought together hundreds of medical experts from across the country to focus on five priority areas for developing measurable goals and recommendations: asthma, chronic heart failure, major depression, diabetes, and pain control in advanced cancer. The MMS was one of the few state medical societies represented at this conference.

The Commonwealth Fund, known for its work on behalf of the uninsured and affordability, has turned its considerable talents to the quality issue. Its recent colloquium in Washington examined the strengths and weaknesses of physician performance measurements. Again, the MMS made one of the earliest contributions to this field. Our 1999 publication outlining principles for physician profiling remains an important reference tool for experts in the field. We have been asked to promote these principles more aggressively on a national scale.

In addition, we're publishing two more patient safety CME programs on our website, and we're hosting a rare suburban session of the Ford Hall Forum at Waltham Woods on May 11 that will focus on patient safety issues.

Common to many of these approaches is a commitment to using information technology to achieve our patient safety objectives. It's now an article of faith that information technology is one of our most effective tools for reducing medical errors, improving quality of care and enhancing efficiency.

Patients, payers and purchasers are paying huge sums of hard-earned money for their health care -- especially in Massachusetts, where our costs are among the highest in the world. Understandably, they are now demanding to receive more tangible value for their expenditures. On the other hand, as physicians, we know intuitively that the value of good health is measured far beyond the economic value of dollars saved and budgets balanced. In both our public and private advocacy efforts, we must always remember to consider this balance.

- Thomas E. Sullivan, M.D.