Resource Library-Leveraging Your Power and Influence to Advance Quality & Safety

Video Transcription

Video Summary

Lawanza Harris (Mount Sinai Health System) and Christine Groves (Veterans Health Administration) describe how leaders can use influence to advance quality and patient safety through aligned strategy, culture, and accountability. Harris outlines Mount Sinai’s effort to standardize quality work across eight hospitals and many outpatient sites, reducing variation and waste while building a culture of continuous learning and high reliability. Their “quality framework” emphasizes people, processes, and infrastructure, supported by pillars such as leadership presence, engagement and collaboration, measurement and actionable analytics, evidence-based interventions with sustainability plans, transparency and communication, standardization with local flexibility, innovation and integration (including digital tools and AI), accountability and reliability, and ongoing workforce upskilling—all through a health equity lens.<br /><br />Groves focuses on “quality influencing” by engaging leadership through clear linkage of quality initiatives to mission, vision, values, and organizational priorities, and by selecting and coaching effective executive sponsors. She reinforces that “quality is everyone’s work,” advocating inclusive collaboration, deference to frontline expertise, identifying and developing quality champions, and celebrating both successes and learning from failures. Using frameworks like Baldrige and the NAHQ competency model helps align priorities and professional development. Groves also promotes a modern view of quality that goes beyond compliance toward outcomes, excellence, and adaptive leadership.

Asset Caption

Speakers: Kristine Groves, BSN, LeWanza Harris, MD, MPH, MBA, MS,

Hear from quality leaders that have been fire starters in their organizations to convince their leadership to lead with quality and safety. This panel of leaders will share stories on how they built and presented a case for quality and leveraged their influence and unique knowledge and skill sets to persuade leadership to invest in quality and safety. Attendees will walk away feeling inspired to elevate themselves and be armed with immediate tips and tricks to bring back to their organizations.

Meta Tag

Competency Tag QLI3

Competency Tag Description Integrate stakeholder feedback into the quality and safety infrastructure and foster interprofessional teamwork.

Domain Tag Quality Leadership and Integration

Keywords

quality improvement leadership

patient safety and high reliability

standardization and variation reduction

quality framework people processes infrastructure

actionable analytics and measurement

health equity lens

executive sponsorship and quality influencing