Protecting our patients
Clinicians and facility
leaders collaborate to
improve patient safety
Another measurement of our clinical quality is linked to patient safety. Every day, our colleagues collaborate to enhance quality of care by reducing risks and improving patient safety while striving for the goal of eliminating all preventable harm.
To ensure everyone within our organization feels empowered to speak up and to engage in patient safety improvement, HCA Healthcare makes considerable efforts to support a culture focused on patient safety. Since completing the implementation of a more efficient, user-friendly patient safety event reporting system in February 2023, the average event reporting rate has increased by over 60%, which signifies improved transparency and engagement of our HCA Healthcare care teams in improving patient care.
Glenice Ashman, Clinical Nurse Coordinator, NICU, HCA Florida University Hospital
In 2024 all HCA Healthcare hospitals prioritized the implementation of the nationally recognized National Action Plan to Advance Patient Safety, also known as the National Action Plan.
Through this implementation, each hospital established a team of leaders, physicians and front-line clinical staff that conducted an assessment of the culture of safety and patient safety program within their facility. Based on their assessment results, each hospital implemented actions recommended from the National Action Plan with the intent to enhance the foundation and culture of safety within their facility.
Having been given the opportunity to participate as a member of the National Action Plan team, Charge Nurse Christy Armistead, RN, CNC, at HCA Florida Gulf Coast Hospital, shared her appreciation for how the physicians and hospital executive team who were members of their National Action Plan team were dedicated to patient safety as a pillar of their daily operations.
Christy mentioned noticing the hospital CEO rounding on nursing units to openly discuss safety opportunities and initiatives with staff. These conversations quickly, and organically, developed into regular discussions among staff and leaders alike.
Every two years, HCA Healthcare administers a survey that allows all healthcare facility staff members to provide their thoughts and feedback on the culture of safety at their facility. In 2025, the Culture of Safety surveys will begin to be administered on an annual basis. From our most recent survey results in 2023, one of the top 3 strengths identified was “I can report patient safety mistakes without fear of punishment.”
“The implementation of the National Action Plan at my facility established safety as a regular topic of discussion between the executive team and front-line staff. It is wonderful to see the entire workforce engaging in improving safety.”
Christy Armistead RN, CNC
Charge Nurse, HCA Florida Gulf Coast Hospital
Melinda Patterson, Chief Nursing Officer at Lone Peak Hospital briefs department leaders about the latest patient safety initiatives.
HCA Healthcare’s Patient Safety Organization
At the core of HCA Healthcare is our commitment to providing safe care to all patients. As part of this commitment, HCA Healthcare established our own Patient Safety Organization (PSO) in 2014. All HCA Healthcare facilities, including hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers, physician clinics and urgent care centers are members of HCA Healthcare’s PSO. Over the last 10 years, we believe every patient encounter is part of this scale of learning as we work to enhance patient safety.
In our ongoing efforts to improve safe patient care, HCA Healthcare’s PSO regularly partners with its members to refine processes and implement new safety measures. One example of this partnership is the Safe Table program instituted in 2022. This program was designed to use the federal privilege and confidentiality protections afforded to work done through PSOs to establish legally protected discussions focused on the safety and quality of care provided to patients. Physicians, leaders and both clinical and non-clinical staff within any HCA Healthcare facility are able to openly, and without fear of retribution, share experiences, feedback, thoughts and concerns with the intent of improving safe patient care. Not only can each of HCA Healthcare PSO members conduct Safe Table discussions at the time and on the topic of their choosing, but HCA Healthcare’s PSO also conducts an annual Safe Table campaign throughout the enterprise.
Since 2022, hundreds of Safe Table discussions have occurred at virtually every hospital within HCA Healthcare, and thousands of individuals have participated in sharing their voice, support and unique ideas and expertise. Throughout the enterprise, HCA Healthcare colleagues learn from Safe Table discussions and work to make safety the focus of every patient encounter.
Through membership with HCA Healthcare’s PSO, all HCA Healthcare facilities are part of one of the nation’s largest learning networks. Patient safety information is regularly shared among our members, as part of our efforts to improve processes and benefit from each other’s lessons learned. As part of this rapid learning network, HCA Healthcare PSO often publishes Safety Alerts to its members. Through Safety Alerts, HCA Healthcare PSO members can learn about safety events or risks and receive expert guidance on ways to make proactive improvements and prevent potential harm.
Our commitment to business integrity guides patient care
HCA Healthcare’s ethics and compliance standards are rooted in our mission and values; and they guide how we care for our patients and treat each other. There are two vital components to our award-winning Ethics and Compliance program: 1) our commitment to ethical conduct and 2) provisions promoting compliance with the laws and regulations that apply to the work we do.
Every other year, HCA Healthcare conducts an Ethics and Compliance survey to gather feedback from colleagues to help identify the strengths and opportunities to improve our organization’s commitment to doing what is right. Survey topics range from ethical behavior and values to misconduct reporting.
Nationally, HCA Healthcare is recognized for our dedication to upholding ethical business practices. In 2025, we were recognized for the 15th time as one of the World’s Most Ethical Companies by Ethisphere.
HCA Healthcare’s required Code of Conduct training provides colleagues with guidance each year on the appropriate ethical and legal standards. Our Ethics and Compliance program also promotes reporting ethics or compliance concerns through several mechanisms including our Ethics Line, which is available 24/7 for colleagues to ask questions and report concerns without fear of retaliation.
“Our organization’s leading reputation as one of the world’s most ethical companies was a significant factor in my decision to pursue a career with HCA Healthcare. With the guidance and support we receive from our dedicated and exceptional ethics and compliance leaders, we can confidently navigate the complexity of the healthcare industry.”
Kristie Shafer
Quality Lab Services, HCA Healthcare
Leveraging technology to improve patient care
HCA Healthcare is embracing a bold vision for the future of healthcare, centered on improving patient care by empowering care teams to develop and implement innovative AI technologies and data-driven solutions. Because of our expansive network of care, we look to take the insights that exist in the patterns of information across our organization and bring that knowledge back to the decision makers and our care teams as part of our work to enhance the quality, accessibility and impact of healthcare.
The Digital Transformation and Innovation (DT&I) department, an evolution of the Care Transformation and Innovation (CT&I) team, was created in 2024 to further expand HCA Healthcare’s digital and AI strategy.
Through DT&I, we continue to build on our technology platform investments to help drive quality, performance and growth while seeking to bring about positive change to improve patient and care team member experience.
Left: Manjot Malhi, MD, Pulmonary Critical Care Fellow Physician, HCA Florida Aventura
Expanse
At the core of DT&I is Expanse, HCA Healthcare’s electronic health record platform (EHR). Initially piloted at three hospitals in New Hampshire in 2023 and six hospitals in North Florida Division by February 2024, Expanse continues to create efficiencies and improve the coordination of care so that our colleagues have the opportunity to spend more time providing direct, compassionate care to our patients.
“We are not only working to implement this technology platform, but also to optimize it and improve it as we go, so that it really enhances the care delivery experience for our nurses, physicians and other caregivers. It also optimizes the quality of care that we can deliver to our patients. That’s the end goal that we’re looking for,” says Jake O’Shea, MD, HCA Healthcare vice president and chief health information officer, and executive sponsor for the Expanse program.
After the successful pilot phase, DT&I announced a timeline for Wave 1 of enterprise-wide implementation of Expanse starting in 2025.
“Expanse gave us a more modern documentation system. I believe other HCA Healthcare facilities should be excited for Expanse!”
Trish Yaxley
Intensive Care Unit (ICU) Open Heart Nurse at Portsmouth Regional Hospital
Timpani
Timpani®, HCA Healthcare’s human-informed, data-driven and patient-centered scheduling and staffing platform, is one of the foundational pillars of our digital transformation efforts.
Timpani® is designed to leverage staff input, including schedule preferences, unique skills, abilities and proficiency, system information, volume statistics and forecasting to create a transparent, fair and balanced schedule. The platform incorporates care team members’ input and provides intelligent staffing decision support once schedules are posted.
In 2024, Timpani® expanded to nearly 50 HCA Healthcare facilities, including pilot programs in the ER, with another 85 hospitals slated for 2025. HCA Healthcare plans to implement Timpani® across all U.S. hospitals and service lines by the end of 2026.
“Timpani gives our patients and our staff the best of both worlds. It allows the staff to have the schedules they want and provide patients with the best skill mix to meet their acuity and needs while they’re with us in our facility.”
Heather Stockman, MSN, RN, CPN, NEA-BC
Director of Clinical Operations, Medical City Arlington Hospital
Damian Domanski, MD, enters his notes during rounding with his cardiac patients at the MountainStar Heart Center at Lone Peak Hospital.
HCA Healthcare and Google Cloud collaboration
HCA Healthcare’s digital strategy prioritizes reducing administrative burden and cognitive load to help clinicians spend more time with patients. As a part of our digital strategy, HCA Healthcare and Google Cloud’s strategic partnership focuses on generative artificial intelligence (AI) technology to assist care teams with time-consuming tasks like documentation. As part of this effort, 114 providers piloted Augmedix Go, an AI powered, hands-free mobile app, in six HCA Healthcare ERs in 2024.
As the first healthcare system to deploy the app in the ER, HCA Healthcare uses this ambient speech technology with Natural Language Processing (NLP), generative AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) to help physicians capture data and create medical notes directly from their conversations with patients within seconds. The app is designed for the provider to review, sign off and submit each medical note before it is entered into the electronic health record.
In 2024, the app was piloted in the outpatient setting. More than 25 physicians tested the technology and hospitalists at two facilities tested the pilot in the inpatient setting. HCA Healthcare is tracking quality, efficiency and both patient and physician satisfaction to assess the potential for expanding to additional facilities.
Nurse Handoff
HCA Healthcare continued to partner with Google Cloud to solve the industry-wide challenges such as nurse handoff – the process where one nurse transfers patient care information to the next nurse at the end of their shift.
Nurse Handoff is a technology designed with input from nurses for nurses. Nurse Handoff is designed to use generative AI to consolidate volumes of patient records such as physician and nursing notes into one concise, auto-generated report. In 2024, Nurse Handoff was tested at TriStar Hendersonville Medical Center.
With more than 60,000 nurse handoffs occurring daily across all HCA Healthcare facilities, we hope to make Nurse Handoff a best practice and vital resource to support HCA Healthcare nurses. This technology is designed to streamline the process and to enhance communication with patients and their families.