ASHRM 2017: Bridging Innovation and Value

​The 2017 annual conference of the American Society for Healthcare Risk Management (ASHRM) in Seattle, Washington, opened on October 15, 2017, with a presentation from president Michael Midgley, JD, MPH, RN, CPHRM, FASHRM. Midgley welcomed participants to the celebration of the organization's 37th year and introduced the conference's theme, "Bridging Innovation & Value." Midgley stressed three qualities of a successful risk manager: networking, thought leadership, and influential decision-making. These three traits, according to Midgley, will help form "an authoritative, collaborative, and influential risk management leader." Both Midgley and Matthew B. Hornberger, MBA, CAE, executive director of ASHRM, highlighted the importance of enterprise risk management (ERM) and discussed some of the organization's successes in 2017, including the publication of a new book, Health Care Risk Management Fundamentals, and the development of an ERM toolkit, "An Enterprise Risk Management Playbook: Implementation Guide for Healthcare Professionals." The opening keynote speaker, Paul LeSage, a former firefighter and paramedic and current senior advisor and incident analyst with SG-Collaborative Solutions, discussed some of the common problems associated with popular safety programs and how a "healthcare reliability organization" approach can be used to make substantive progress in improving patient outcomes, quality, service, and operational goals.