The conference room was beautiful with a wall of windows as the backdrop of the stage, overlooking pretty Dorchester Bay. The audience consisted of doctors, nurses, health care leaders and public policy people all from the state of Massachusetts. These people had come together to celebrate the movement and to more importantly be inspired to continue on in the improvement of health care delivery at their hospitals. The centerpiece of the event was Charlie Kenney's new book The Best Practice: How the New Quality Movement is Transforming Medicine.

The morning began with a welcome by Cleve Killingsworth, the Chairman and CEO of BCBSMA. It was apparent to me as I listened to him that he and his organization were committed to patient safety. It seemed that BCBSMA was going beyond the call of duty. BCBSMA isn't sitting in the back of the room, merely observing the quality movement, but its leaders are committed to leading the way and I am grateful for that.

After Cleve's opening remarks, I shared Josie's story and my thoughts on Charlie's great book. I recommend this book to anybody interested in learning more about the history of the patient safety movement that is truly changing health care for the better. I hope that the book can raise awareness on the reality of medical errors and inspire people to continue their work to improve patient safety or even to take up the cause.

I could go on and on about the interesting ideas of Charlie and other safety leaders like Don Berwick of IHI, Louise Liang of Kaiser Permanente, Uma Kotagal of Cincinnati Children's Hospital, and Goran Henriks of the Qulturum in Jonkoping, Sweden, but instead I'd like to send you to Paul Levy's blog "Running a Hospital". In addition to being the President and CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Paul is an amazing blogger. He was at the conference, and has done an excellent job on writing about the days events. Take a peek.

And so Monday night I had dinner with five people from Health Care for All (HCA). HCA is a Massachusetts-based non-profit organization that is working to- among other things- create greater quality health care throughout the state. You can read all about them on their website. HCA sponsors the Consumer Health Quality Council- a very active and renowned coalition of health care consumers who have been personally affected by medical errors. The Council was created in 2006 and currently has about 40 members who are doing some impressive things: sharing their medical error stories with the public, advocating for improved health care, and meeting with legislators to introduce health care improvements into law.

A recent success included their year and a half-long work in the development and signing of a groundbreaking state law that includes: