HQW 2026: The Road Ahead: NAHQ's Bold Vision for Healthcare (Live)-HQW 2026: The Road Ahead: NAHQ's Bold Vision for Healthcare (Live)

HQW 2026: The Road Ahead: NAHQ's Bold Vision for Healthcare (Live)

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Video Summary

At Health Care Quality Week 2026, marking NAHQ’s 50th anniversary, CEO Stephanie Mercado framed healthcare quality as an act of generational stewardship: protecting what previous generations built while strengthening it for those to come. Drawing on Florence’s Duomo and pioneers such as Florence Nightingale, Ernest Codman, and Lucian Leape, she showed how asking bold questions can drive lasting change.<br /><br />Mercado traced NAHQ’s development of professional community, CPHQ certification, competency frameworks, and workforce programs. She argued that quality and safety must become capabilities shared across entire healthcare organizations—not the responsibility of a few specialists. Technology and AI matter, she said, but people and their skills are what transform care.<br /><br />Her challenge to attendees was to ask the next question, challenge assumptions, strengthen colleagues and teams, and help build quality and safety capabilities across healthcare. The session also celebrated new NAHQ fellows and their contributions to the profession.

Keywords

Health Care Quality Week 2026

NAHQ 50th anniversary

healthcare quality and safety

Stephanie Mercado

CPHQ certification

Florence Nightingale