Making the healthcare system safer with innovation and technology.

The way to move ahead with high-quality healthcare and patient safety is to "practice, innovate, assess, readjust, and practice some more," the administrator of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), Carolyn Clancy, MD, said last month at the opening of the agency's 2005 patient safety and health information technology conference. This issue of The Quality Letter for Healthcare Leaders highlights several of those initiatives--ranging from improvement of the discharge process to enhancement of a Web portal that puts health plan members in the driver's seat to observing variations in patient flow--where the power of data is affecting safety and quality.